Observation Between 12:30 and 2pm. Monday.

Hey everyone.  So I headed over to Noreiga around 12:30 yesterday.  I decided to walk the whole distance of the street and try to piece some things together.  Heres what I saw:

12:30 PM
-walked the first area of the businesses, many of the people there were middle aged to older.
-many of the restaurants are asian inspired, but as I looked at the menus (even if it was a Japanese restaurant, or a hawaiian barbeque)  most of the writing was first in Chinese and then went to english.
-lots of dental, and beauty shops besides the many restaurants
-as I passed the first business area the street started to become more residential
-I started to question whether once I got to the residential area if the are was more "white" than "asian"
but after a few blocks I started to see more Chinese businesses

1:00 PM
-I also noticed that many of the restaurants on this street aren't really any type of chains.  The only familiar ones I saw were: subway, bank of america, safeway, wallgreens and maybe a few others, but most of them were unnoticeable.
-I see that most of the restaurants have chinese writing on the menu's first then english, so maybe these businesses are welcoming other races, but mostly geared to Chinese.
-I only saw one food place that didn't have any menu on the front door, and seemed to be only aimed for Chinese.  I deducted this because of my many times in China town, this shop looked exactly like the hole in the wall food shops that I can only enter with my Chinese friends.  (the hole in the wall comment is not meant to sound negative, usually these places have the best food)

1:30 PM
-I still only see many older asians, the second most people I see are white, and as I walk further down the street towards the ocean I noticed that the Chinese writing starts to disappear and I feel that the last area of the street starts to aim towards any one.
-I saw two bars, the one farther down seemed to aim more towards a younger generation, but I am not completely sure.  (I feel that I need to come down on a Friday and Saturday night to find out more)
-Besides older people I see a few young families (their children range from 1-5)

Some questions:
Well basically It would be common sense that not many young people would be out at this time because most of them would probably be in school.  But I want to know when I will see the younger generation and where they audience is attracted to.
I also want to know if there is more of a white population at the end of Noreiga, because as I went all the way down, I barely saw any asian businesses.
I want to go around 3-6 p.m. soon so I can find the youth.

So hopefully I can head there at a later time today, and get these questions answered.  But one of my main questions was answered: what ethnic enclave is this?  Mostly Chinese, but I want to find out if the Vietnamese restaurants are chinese owned or not, of it they area actually Vietnamese, then I can figure if there is more of a Vietnamese population on this street, but from what I see now,  Chinese.
I'll do more research today, and update most of my questions.

Thanks for reading (and sorry for any grammatical errors and If i didn't capitalize correctly)
-Michele Richardson

Observation (Noriega Between 19th Ave-24th Ave)

I went to Noriega on Fri, March 4th from 5PM-6:30PM

I went to Cafe Bakery from 5PM-6PM and ate dinner while observing.

5PM

• Mostly senior citizens and middle-aged adults eating
• majority of them were Chinese; some spoke Mandarin and some spoke Cantonese
• 1 table of Filipino family
• 2 tables of Caucasian families
• Of all the tables no one had a group larger than 4

5:30PM

• Families w/ their children
• Teen groups and college student groups
• New people arrived all Chinese
• Still no group larger than 4

6PM

After eating dinner I walked down Noriega to about 24th Ave and took note of some businesses and their names.

Cafe Bakery - Chinese Restaurant

North East Medical Services - Chinese Hospital

Fujiyama-ya - Japanese Restaurant

Vietnamese Noodle House - Vietnamese Restaurant

Lanna Restaurant Thai Cuisine - Thai Restaurant

Pine BBQ Korean Cuisine - Korean Restaurant

Hawaiian Drive In - Chinese owned Hawaiian Restaurant

East West Bank - Chinese Bank

Bibles Books Cards Gifts - Chinese Bible Book Store

Dr. Louie Family Dentistry - Chinese Dentist Office

Fay Cleaners - Chinese Owned Cleaners

Star Learning Center - Chinese SAT/HW Tutoring Center

A&W Contractors - Chinese owned Construction Company

Aa Kitchen Appliance - Chinese owned Appliance store

There were more business names that I did not write down, but I noticed that the majority were Asian owned or directed for the Asian community.

-Raymond Zhou

Thesis Prospectus: Noriega Street

Thesis Prospectus: Noriega Street

Group Members:

·         JeRevien Richeson- jricheson12@yahoo.com

·         Raymond Zhou- raymondz032091@yahoo.com

·         Joyce Ku- tapigele@live.com

·         Jason Lew-  jasonxraptor@yahoo.com

·         Michele Richardson- ennuiae@aol.com

 Our group is researching the area of Noriega Street between 19^th avenue and 34^th avenue. The area mostly houses small family operated and owned businesses, while the majority of these are restaurants or markets. The “ethnic enclave” generally seems to be Chinese with a smaller population of Japanese and Vietnamese individuals. Through preliminary observations we have gathered data to construct a thesis for the project; however, we intend on tweaking and better defining a thesis after more thorough research. Who originally developed the Asian-American community on Noriega street, and why. How has its purpose changed since it was first developed? Although our current thesis statement is generalized and highly vague, we have simply defined this as a jumping off point to guide us in our research of the community. In order to achieve this, we have divided work into topics of interest to research in the next coming weeks. Before spring break we hope to have a concrete thesis and all of our information for our research paper.

Each member of our group has been assigned to a specific focus for researching in our area. We have divided the work as follows: map businesses from 19^th to 25^th (including business owner, business purpose, business name, and founding date), map businesses from 27^th to 34^th (including business owner, business purpose, business name, and founding date); find statistics for neighborhood (population, ethnicity, sex, age etc.); research when area was founded and defined as Asian American community, as well what the first business in the community was and when it was opened; and then we will take a look at a general overview of how the community has changed since it first came together.  In addition to having already done initial field observation, we will be doing our introductory research online. After completing our online research will be going out into the community to take video interviews at specific businesses as well as in other areas of the community. We will continue to do field research as the project progress but we will also be meeting to compare information and piece the project together.

Since it seems to be rather cumbersome to meet with each other as often as we need to thoroughly compare information, we will instead be using a blog we created in order to more efficiently keep track and compare our notes, information and resources. Each group member will be able to access, post and update the blog as needed. This blog will help to document our research process along the way, as well as keep in touch with each other. We will be using our blog to assist us during our presentation; but in addition to that, after the project is completed, the blog will be posted as public domain on blogspot.com, so other individuals and students can access the information for years to come!