COMMUNITY
40 Local Entrepreneurs
The Sense of Sound Monday Off Please
Written and photographed by Viktoryia Shylkouskaya
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
October 2020
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or a long time, people have enjoyed combining food with music. Musicians performed during dinner parties in Roman times, and minstrels entertained dining guests at medieval banquets. Today, musical accompaniment during meals is much more common, and the music played is more varied than ever before. If you run a hospitality business – no matter whether it is a fine dining restaurant, a hip bar, or a cozy café – you know it: Music plays a fundamental part in the retail mix and enhances the atmosphere. This is exactly what Park Jaeman (a.k.a. Diego), the owner of Monday Off Please, says: “Music is a key element when it comes to setting the mood.” Pizza restaurants may be commonplace in South Korea, but this one is no ordinary pizzeria – it is a venue that combines café, restaurant, club, and LP bar. Apart from pizza restaurants, it is a place where one can listen to thousands of Diego’s “Comme Ci Comme Ça Records” collected LPs. A music school graduate with a passion for pizza, street culture, and everything chill, Diego opened the doors to his hip music bar restaurant in 2015. “With an open kitchen, open walls, and a massive open patio, you get to see every move Diego makes no matter where you sit.
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About the only thing more open than his kitchen is the ever-jovial Diego himself,” one of my Gwangju friends told me, and I would be hard-pressed to disagree. Alternating between spinning sizzling pizzas behind the counter and spinning cool tracks during “Sofa Sessions” on the weekends, Diego and his helpmate Shin Piljun work double-time to bring their own affable rhyme and rhythm to the table with every meal, fostering an environment conducive to fun, laughter, and perhaps even friendship. But how, or at what point, do we get to know that a person is our friend? As the saying goes, “It takes time to become good friends with someone.” I think I became friends with Diego and Piljun from the first time I visited Monday Off Please. I do not know how this happened, but I am almost sure it has something to do with the culture that Diego creates in his restaurant. Diego likes collaborations. This is how Monday Off Please became a space not only for listening to but also for sharing music. Famous musicians such as June One from Seoul-based indie band “Glen Check”; resident Gwangju DJs Seop, Goat The Funky, and others; Seoulbased DJ Conan (from the Itaewon “Discoexperience”
9/23/2020 11:05:28 AM
