The group of weary nightclubbers piles into a small room furnished with two big black couches, a disco ball, colored lights, two microphones and a large TV with a videodisc player.
There, a woman presents them with a six-pack of beer, sliced oranges, a plate of dried squid and two tambourines. They’ll snack and sing — out of the hearing of other revelers — until the wee hours of the morning.
It’s just another Saturday night at Chicago Noraebang, a frequent final destination for club-hopping regulars on Chicago’s multifaceted but little-known Korean night-life scene.
This establishment, where patrons sing karaoke-style (called noraebang) in one of 20 or so private rooms, is just one of the stops on a popular night-life circuit sometimes called the Koreatown crawl by its devotees.
“The evening typically starts around 5 or 7 at a restaurant, but many start a lot later than that for the younger generation,” explains Abraham Lee, 25, youth counselor at Korean American Community Services (KACS).
“After that, (people) meet up with friends who did not eat with them at a cafe. Then they head out to a bar, like Barcode, where they can drink, dance and have some fun. Later, they will usually go to an after-hours place like Episode. Then, after some more drinking there, they will go to another place for noraebang. Then, if they are all still wired up — and this is usually when the sun is coming up — they will go to somebody’s house or go home.”
This entertainment phenomenon, encompassing dozens of businesses, has blossomed on Chicago’s Northwest Side over the last five years as a large influx of affluent foreign students has come to the area to study and Chicago’s burgeoning population of second-generation Koreans has come of age.
“A lot of it has to do with the post ’65 or ’75 immigration wave of Koreans,” says Charse Yun of KACS. “All those people who were born to immigrant parents during those years have grown up, and they need a place to party. They call them NGK, New Generation Koreans.”
Still, the scene has grown so discreetly that many who live even in the heart of it may not realize it exists. Clubs, their windows often deliberately frosted over or covered with sheet metal, bear cryptic names like Juliana Hard Rock Discoteque, if they even have any English sign. It’s a scene that thousands of revelers take part in each weekend. But few, if any, are non-Koreans.
And it all happens within Chicago’s Koreatown, an area bordered by Western, Pulaski, Lawrence and Peterson Avenues.
On a recent Saturday night, a group of Korean-Americans from the Chicago area accompanied some Korean-American visitors from New York, Kansas and Los Angeles on the Northwest Side circuit to check it out.
9:30 p.m.: First stop — Rok Coffee Emporium. Like a lot of Korean cafes, this clean, handsome, airy establishment serves gourmet coffee and coffee drinks at relatively high prices (a cup of regular is $2.50). But a stop at the cafe is seen as an integral part of the going-out experience, and its prices are chicken feed compared to the several hundred dollars that can be spent at establishments on the rest of the journey. Stragglers join the group two by two, and smoke and sip until all are assembled. Then everyone heads across the street for some karaoke action.
10:30 p.m.: The entourage files into 2 Night Lounge, which features a pool table and bar in the front room and tables with a karaoke stage and screen in the back. A customer belts out “How Could an Angel Break My Heart” on stage while the others comment on how unusual it is for Koreans to actually use the stage. Although most of the people in the almost empty room are Koreans, the song catalog lists selections in several languages.
“They have Thai, Vietnamese and Spanish songs,” says Sooyoung Park, lead singer of the Chicago rock band Seam. “I’ve only been here a few times, and you usually get a mixed crowd, but not many white people.”
A cluster of girls sits at one table giggling as they perform a singalong to “I’ll Be There,” while, for no apparent reason, miltary images from the West Bank flash on the screen with the lyrics. Meanwhile, a solitary, sad-looking guy (an anomaly because most Koreans go clubbing in groups) slides into a booth and begins an impressive set of morose love songs, kind of like a participatory ’90s version of crying in your beer to juke box songs.
Our group starts leafing through the catalogs, looking for songs despite our still-sober states. Although Koreans prefer the relative privacy of noraebangs over the public karaoke here, group members explain that it has become such a part of the culture that stereotypical Asian shyness doesn’t apply.
“It’s kind of a cultural thing where you really can’t refuse to sing,” says Chicago arts organizer Ben Kim. “But that’s how you get better.”
“When I moved to Korea at first, I would not sing,” explains Katherine Bruce, a New York-based writer for Forbes, whose parents are Korean and Scottish. “But they just made so much fun of me that it was easier to sing and be really bad than not to sing. It’s no problem now.”
Bruce then jumps up on stage for a spellbinding performance of a Korean pop song that receives applause all around. Back at the table, a goofy but lower-key version of Grease’s “Summer Nights” suffices for the rest of the group, now happily munching on fried dumplings, chicken wings, pickled turnip cubes, cabbage with dressing and jalapenos.
11:30 p.m.: The gang arrives at the slick new nightclub Episode. With its plush couches, stacked TVs, tastefully arranged candles, artfully lit pool tables and luminescent aquariums, the club can trick you into thinking you’re in some trendy River North hot spot — albeit one that only serves Koreans. But you are in West Ridge, at the newest club on the Korean night-life circuit. Patrons are not required to pay a cover charge but those sitting at the curtain-framed tables, which are seen as the “prestige tables,” are expected to order a certain amount of food and drink — usually a bottle of expensive whiskey with a platter of fruit or, often, squid-based Korean bar snacks.
The group is seated at a table with black couches around three sides. A big crystal pitcher filled with blue-tinted soju, (a potato-based alcohol popular in Korea) arrives. Some use their cell phones to contact friends and acquaintances who are meeting them later.
The conversation around the table is in English, although almost everyone admits to speaking at least some Korean. Still, these New Generation Koreans, dressed casually in T-shirts and khakis, see a clear line between them and the foreign students or recent immigrants sitting at other tables speaking entirely in Korean.
“A lot of these FOBish (Fresh Off The Boat) kids want that Korean scene: the Korean fashion, the Korean look,” says Seam bass player William Choi, gesturing to a table of smartly dressed guys and mini-dress-clad ladies. “They have their own style, the way they wear their makeup, with a lot of lip liner, and they wear their lipstick really big. It’s very homogeneous here. All the girls are into that style. You wouldn’t be able to tell these girls from the real Korean girls. What I can’t figure out is why these kids want this. I guess it’s comfort they want.”
“A lot don’t have confidence in their English skills,” notes Abraham Lee. “A lot are homesick. And these places look a lot like Korea.”
Still, these Korean-Americans seem to feel pretty comfortable here too. They drink, smoke and chat for hours above the sensibly low music
1:30 a.m.: While the others stay and talk, a few take off for Barcode, a 4-year-old dance club on Western Avenue. There, security is tight and the dance floor is jammed with youthful clubgoers grooving to Korean pop tunes and lounging at cafe-sized tables. A typical table is crowded with half-consumed bottles of Chivas Regal, tall carafes of cold milk (the whiskey chaser of choice) and large fruit plates. Although Barcode no longer has a tiered system of required spending at certain tables, it is not uncommon for a table to spend between $150 and $500. On rare occasions the bill will hit $1,000.
“When you go to Barcode, you want to show off,” says Lee. “So you order big bottles. It’s guys showing off to guys as much to the girls. It’s a pride thing where they spend as much money as possible.”
The place is crowded with well-dressed hipsters — mostly recent immigrants or JOJs (Just off the Jet), as some in the group call them, noting that it is the more politically correct version of FOBs.
“When Barcode first opened it was very gothic, very alternative, because that was a desirable style for the Korean-American crowd then,” says Lee. “But the Korean international students didn’t like it that much and they are the ones who spend a lot of money. So they changed it to a kind of trendy hip-hop style that is very similar to the things happening in Korea. There are other Korean things — like all the waiters bowing to their patrons — but there is still a good mix of Korean and American style.”
Barcode may still be thriving, but several businesses on the Korean night-life circuit are hurting because of the recent Asian economic crisis.
“A lot of these people out spending money are Korean students from abroad with wealthy parents,” Lee says. “But with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) situation, their parents cannot send them as much as they did, and so they can’t go out as much. So a lot of small businesses around here are hurting as well.”
2:30 a.m.: The group pulls out of the packed parking lot and returns to Episode, where the vodka has run dry. So they order OB beers all around to eat with plates of deep-fried beef strips and a platter of tempura potatoes, onions, broccoli, mushrooms and baseball-sized squid rings.
3:20 a.m.: The party moves to Chicago Noraebang. Despite the late hour, the place is jumping with late-night singers tucked away in sound-proof rooms. The group pores over the extensive song catalogs that are printed in several languages, including Tagalog, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, English and, of course, Korean. Only Ron, an artist who lives in Hyde Park, chooses a Korean song, the childlike “Hello,” with lots of “la, la, la, la, las.” The rest of the NGK’s and 1.5 generationers (who came to the U.S. at a very early age) opt for ’80s classics like Aha’s “Take On Me,” ZZ Tops’s “Sharp Dressed Man,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and an extra-passionate rendition of REO Speedwagon’s “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore.” They drink, smoke and shake the tambourines like pros until nearly 4:30 a.m.
When they emerge from the nondescript building with the all-Korean sign, they are firmly back on American soil.
