Tag: virginia

When did Annandale become a giant PF Changs?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, mythical wife and I went up to Virginia to visit my family, as we had some pretty important news to tell them.  Since good Korean food outside of the litany of all-you-can-eat KBBQs are pretty few and far between without having to drive some distance, we decided to meet up with my family at a Korean restaurant in Annandale, which anyone with any knowledge of Northern Virginia is astutely aware is very much, the Korean part of town.

Or so I thought.

Clearly, things have changed a great deal throughout the years, most notably the fact that Korean food is very much en vogue and extremely popular these days.  The restaurant that my family and I went to was slam packed when we got there, and the vast majority of the diners in the restaurant were very much not Korean.

I had fond memories of this place from when I was younger and still living at home; for one, my parents were still together, but I remember how the place was much smaller, very much more rustic, with a décor that was definitely trying to lean old country, with rice papered walls.  Everyone in the restaurant was Korean, and the atmosphere and ambiance was much more relaxed and slow paced, and the soondooboo jjigae was scalding hot, and the absolute most perfect food on the planet to eat on a winter’s night.

When I suggested the restaurant, my mom questioned me if I was sure if this was the place I wanted to go, saying it was always slammed, and that there always a wait.  I didn’t realize we were talking about the same place, but clearly as she still lives in the area, has witnessed the PF Chang-ification of not just this particular restaurant, but presumably the rest of Annandale, as Korean food began to catch the imaginations of all sorts of white people who love to claim to be adventurous eaters, and relished at the thought of being the pioneers amongst their peers to delve into the worlds of all this oriental food.

Needless to say, when we pulled up to the restaurant, I was at first a little surprised at how the place was now substantially larger than it was the last time I was there, and the parking lot was three times larger, and just about every single spot was taken.  It’s actually amazing that the two cars we had were able to find spaces.  But upon going inside, it was another surprise to me to see just how slam packed the place was, and with the vast majority of diners, most definitely not Korean.  This was very much a shocking contrast to my last memories of this place.

Continue reading “When did Annandale become a giant PF Changs?” →

Waynesboro, Virginia, the land where professional wrestling stood still

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I recently went to an indy wrestling show out in the sticks of Virginia.  Waynesboro, to be exact.  This was actually the impetus for a trip I made in order to spend some time with my family, since I frankly don’t really spend nearly enough time with them.

The decision to go to this show was really quite an easy one, because when it first came onto my radar, Juventud Guerrera was listed to be on the card, among a pretty star-studded guest list, especially for an indy show as this one was; guys like Sting, Lex Luger, Vader, Ron Simmons, and the Rock ’n Roll Express were also slated to be at this show.

But as legendary as some of those guys are, I have this ironic love for the weird, and the jobbers, and the guys that don’t get nearly the credit they deserve, like Juventud Guerrera.  Plus, I really wanted a Juvi mask to essentially complete my collection of luchador masks on my shelf, since the Juice is somehow considered “too old” in Mexico itself, to have his masks for sale on the streets of la Playa del Carmen. Without question, Juvi was really the only reason that I wanted to go to this show at all.

So plans were made, flights were purchased, tickets were acquired, and I was on my way back to Virginia for a long weekend of family, friends and Juvi Juice.  I was looking forward to it greatly.

And then as the show neared, I went to the promotion’s website to refresh my memory of what else was in store; and noticed that Juventud’s profile was no longer a part of the promotional banner.  To make matters worse, all mention of Juvi was gone from the site.  My friend messaged them on Facebook, but because they’re a yokel backwater promotion, they never responded, but all signs were pointing to the idea that Juventud was no longer going to be a part of it.

“Card subject to change” is one of the bigger tropes of the business, and because professional wrestling is full of flakes and bums, it’s the thing said to easily Mentos out of just about any sort of card changing, like Juventud Guerrera not being a part of it.  Unfortunately for those of us outside of the business, the real world doesn’t work as conveniently as the scripted one inside of it.  I still had plane tickets and vacation time punched out at work.  Juvi or no Juvi, I was still going to be going to this show, disappointed as hell that I wouldn’t get to meet the Juice and pick up la maskara for the colleccíon.

Oh yeah and Vader died, so that was another blow to the card that was going to be hard to cover up.

Continue reading “Waynesboro, Virginia, the land where professional wrestling stood still” →

This is precisely why my trust in white people is fractured

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the vast majority of nerds that comprise of the vast majority of my social media circles, there was an individual that many of us knew/knew of identified as having been present in Charlottesville during the weekend of hell there.  This was confirmed by commentary made by them that stated as such, and that’s pretty much all that there needed to be known by the community before the witch hunt began and the shit started to fly.

Typically, my go-to move on social media is to unfollow people but not outright unfriend people, if I don’t like seeing what people post.  Whether they post too much for my liking, post opinions that I don’t want to see, flood my streams full of narcissism and/or selfies, or all of the above, among other reasons, I’ll usually unfollow first, but rarely unfriend.  I don’t want paranoid people eventually discovering that they’ve been unfriended and to have an uncomfortable conversation later down the line, and if it can be avoided, I’d rather avoid it.

But it’s not every day that you find out that someone you know personally, have allowed into your home, and allowed to pet and carry your dog, with smiles and seeming sincerity, marched in a rally and chanted discriminatory rhetoric with known white supremacists.

This is why my trust in white people has taken a critical hit, and why I can’t feel like I can ever let my guard down with them.  Even those that I’ve known for a while, apparently.

Continue reading “This is precisely why my trust in white people is fractured” →

What Charlottesville has done to me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not often I want to go back to a major topical event, but admittedly, I’m having a hard time letting this one go.  It’s on the tongue of every news outlet, and even in the endlessly flowing stream of social media, it’s still a hot topic that is still the talk of the town.  But the emergence of blatant white supremacy, the supposed neo-Nazis, and just plain eruption of bigotry that took America by storm in of all places, Charlottesville, Virginia has been a pretty big story, with some everlasting repercussions and impressions, whether people other than myself want to admit to it or not.

Originally, I assumed it was mostly populated by the degenerate hill tribes of Virginia where the KKK is known to still be around, but it turns out that it was slightly more organized, and comprised of people from all around America.  Why Charlottesville was chosen as their point of conglomeration was a small question I had, but given the obvious answer that such a demonstration would never have been able to fly in Northern Virginia, where they’d have been eaten alive by the vast mixing bowl of the region, with the same sentiment being similar in the Commonwealth’s capital of Richmond. 

My friends and I have laughed about how this would only have ended in tragic-ironic gun violence if it happened in the next largest populace of the Virginia Beach-Tidewater region, which has very large black communities with many notorious gang issues, whom would probably love to band together to oppose a bunch of white supremacists, so it pretty much left Charlottesville, home to the University of Virginia as the only logical place to gather and blather on about white-this and white-that and all their stupid shit that they somehow think is remotely acceptable in 2017.

I can’t get over the irony in that Charlottesville is the place where I learned Korean, a language not belonging to whitey, is also a place where large numbers of angry white bigots gathered to light tiki torches and chant about their supposed dying culture.  Obviously, it’s not so much a reflection of Charlottesville itself, as much as it is the unfortunate choice of gathering of a bunch of racists, but that’s how history works; Charlottesville is a site where hatred gathered, boiled over, and became national news.

Continue reading “What Charlottesville has done to me” →

This is precisely why Northern Virginia wants to secede

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I want to do nothing but make fun of the fact that they’re all carrying tiki torches, probably purchased for $3 a pop at their local Walmart or convenience store, and how they probably bitch about how fuel costs more than the hardware itself.  And how it’s hard to really take them seriously because they’re protecting themselves from mosquitos at the same time they’re marching like sheep, preaching bigoted messages of white purity and some other hateful rhetoric.

But it’s because of the bigoted messages of white purity and some other hateful rhetoric that I can’t just laugh at the tiki torches, and instead have to wince and acknowledge that somehow, this is 2017 and not 1917.

Here’s the thing – I am a native Virginian.  I was born in Virginia, and spent 21 years of my life in Virginia.  Seeing shit like large, organized white supremacy groups marching down the campus of the University of Virginia is something that I never thought I would really see in my lifetime, and really, really makes me glad that I don’t live in Virginia anymore.  It makes me ashamed of the state I was born in and grew up in, and I wish I could deny my Virginia origins.

This isn’t a post about a topic because it’s topical, it’s a post because there is a part of me that has some relation to the situation in the fact that this shit is happening not that far from where I grew up.

Continue reading “This is precisely why Northern Virginia wants to secede” →

The most NOVA story ever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Short story shorter: woman in smarmy Mercedes-Benz somehow manages to not just crash, but wedge her car stuck onto the bumper of a smarmier $300,000 Ferrari

Watching the corresponding video to this tragic story, all I could think about was the issues that fictional Eagletonians dealt with in fictional Parks and Recreation; shit like not enough lobster at the soiree, or the mineral water content in the urinals being not up to par.

But this is pretty much the most Northern Virginia story ever to happen.  A WASP pretending like they’re rich and white privileged, somehow managing to not just hit, but basically run over and get stuck on top of an extremely overpriced and expensive status symbol with wheels; owned by another WASP.  Not to mention the Benz had a vanity plate reading “DER BNZ” because nothing is WASPier than needing to let everyone know that your car is definitely of a German manufacturer.

Continue reading “The most NOVA story ever” →

QQing over wrestling

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sad because I’m missing Wrestlemania this year.

I’m not sad because I’m missing Wrestlemania this year, because the card looks putrid, NXT Takeover will inevitably be the better show, but Wrestlemania’s card looks putrid this year.  Nobody wants to see Roman Reigns win the world title, nobody wants to see Kevin Owens be in a match that includes the Miz and Zack Ryder, and the best match of the night very well is going to be the Divas title match between Charlotte, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks.  No disrespect to the hardest working women in ages, but the rest of the card is definitely not worth sinking five hours of time into.

I am sad because I’m missing Wrestlemania this year, because it’s pretty much the first time in over a decade in which I’m not going to be watching it with some of my closest and longest tenured friends, whom we’ve had something of a tradition of doing for the better part of almost the last two decades.  Prior to this year, the only two blips in the radar have been the times in which I actually attended Wrestlemania, which were cool in their own right, but paled in comparison to evenings of catching up, shooting the shit, stuffing our faces silly, and commentating on all the bad matches of the night.

Continue reading “QQing over wrestling” →