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Figure 1. Human Hands flyer.
space of Chinatown, which would host the show, through the advance of punk soldiers into the Hong Kong Cafe´. Likewise, a Los Angeles Times headline from 1979 drew connections between racialized domestic space and war zones by describing punks as engaging in a ‘‘skirmish’’ in Chinatown.68 The article, like the flyer, imposes the symbols of imperial war upon a domestic space, marked through racialized and refugee bodies, narrating Chinatown as a space available for war and violence. Later dubbed the ‘‘Chinatown Punk Wars’’ or sometimes the ‘‘Won Ton Wars,’’ the conflict reportedly involved the rivalry of two restaurants that faced each other over a courtyard: Madame Wong’s and the Hong Kong Cafe´, both of which started booking punk bands in an attempt to increase business.69 While the story seems to be a war between the restaurants, the actual violence that erupted at Madame Wong’s (an altercation that seemingly haunts the Human Hands flyer) was not caused by the proprietors of the Hong Kong Cafe´, but by punks who attended a concert featuring two female-fronted bands – The Bags and X – on November 8, 1978. The stories that are told about the punk space of Chinatown usually provide justification for the violence that occurred at the riot. This incident, along with a girl fight on another night and presided over from the stage by The Alley Cats’ Dianne Chai, were believed to be tipping points for Esther Wong, who decided then that thrashing punk caused more trouble than it was worth, and wanted to book bands that played at slower tempos.70 It was widely understood on the scene that Wong