MUSIC

At most of our pop-up events, we had latenight ph ở . Growing up, my parents used to drive me to all their Vietnamese parties, and they would make music all night long—someone would be on the keyboard, someone would be on the drums, my mom would get up and start singing. It was kind of like an upgraded karaoke. And around midnight, they would always get hungry and make phở or another noodle soup. I wanted to bring a little bit of that culture into the party atmosphere.

The first one, we featured two DJs—one was Charlie Glitch, my partner. He’s Mexican and Puerto Rican, so not southeast Asian, but very helpful with this event! We also featured my friend Norm Rockwell from the Pacifics—he’s an old-school DJ. He’s pretty active in the Chicago hip-hop community. The second one was in May, for AAPI Month. We featured Ubae, who gave us a drag performance.