Anna Maria Smith
My father enjoyed watching Amapola, the weekend Filipino variety show on Channel 18 hosted by Ness Aquino and Amapola, a local celebrity who wore a beautiful Filipino dress and sang for her TV audience in the ’70s. The show was simple and featured some Taglish banter between the singer and her dashing host, both sitting in high-backed rattan chairs.
The Filipinos of my father’s generation had come to the US decades before, first stepping onto heavy brown Hawaiian soil to work as laborers on the farms. As they made their way to the mainland, most settled near the coast. A good share of them chose San Francisco, where a little stretch of Filipino town existed. By the time I was ten, Manilatown had nearly disappeared and its last residents were in the middle of a fight against the forces of redevelopment to save the International Hotel, a residence for many of the older Filipinos and the last property of their own.
As Filipino Americans began to fight back against their eviction, Ness Aquino became an important figure for them. His Filipino supper club, the Mabuhay Gardens, was only a few blocks away on the long stretch of Broadway, an innocuous white building among a strip of flashing lights from the enticing stripper bars.
My father knew of Ness as his free time was spent at the International Hotel with his friends; they joined the I-Hotel protests. At home, my father invited me to watch Amapola. My mother had inexplicably banned Filipino things from our household, but Amapola was a way for me to learn some my father’s culture and of his fight. Amapola was never a place for political issues, but her beautiful voice drifted into my father’s psyche, and it let me know what he was missing. Nevertheless, I really wanted to watch something else on television.
I never connected my father’s fight for his friends or his culture until years later, when I made my first trip to the Mabuhay Gardens to see the Dead Kennedys. I knew Ness on sight as the co-host of Amapola, and I shared this much with him as we chatted by the club’s pinball machine. Ness wanted to know why I was at a punk show and I gave him the shortcut version of my ambition to be a rock journalist. The local punk music scene was original and shared my desperation for life. Ness wanted to help. He offered to open his club to me, promising that he would never charge me admission so that I could see my dream come true. He would greet me whenever I walked into my club, letting all my friends in without ever asking for money. Ness masked my awkwardness by bringing me backstage. He would introduce me to friends, and sometimes to the musicians. The rest was up to me but Ness knew who I needed to meet. He enabled those encounters, and I was soon making my way through a maze of loud music and show posters.
Over time, Ness would become like a second father to me. He was so happy when I became a DJ at college radio station KUSF, doing anything to accommodate us as we set out to conquer the world. Our evenings were spent listening to new bands and fighting for some light so we could scribble notes onto napkins and little writing pads. We used the Mabuhay Gardens to make small films, take alleyway photos, and throw benefits. Ness continued to give and we thrived because of it.
There were times when I tried tell my father about Ness and the Mabuhay Gardens, but he never grasped the whole Filipino-restaurant-turned-punk-club transition – there was a fifty-year difference between us. I just wanted my father to understand that years of reluctantly watching Amapola had finally led to something positive. He remained under the impression I would be making a guest appearance on the show. At least he seemed proud.