Norman Lau’s LionDanceME — arguably the world’s most active lion dance group — had just put on 300 shows in two months. Lau was feeling good that day in early March, but soon he discovered that merchants on San Francisco Chinatown’s main commercial corridor were saying “no more” — no more to the street closures the dancers needed.
The pushback came after signs went up on Grant Street announcing that three blocks along the corridor between California Street and Washington Street would be closed from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sundays, to allow the lion dancers to perform.
Chinatown merchants were not happy. They took their complaints to their supervisor, Aaron Peskin, as well as Mayor London Breed and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
Now, it’s LionDanceME vs. the small business community.
Lion dance performers incorporate kung fu to mimic the movements of lions for good luck. For decades, the performance has been widely regarded as a key symbol of Chinese culture in America. In San Francisco, lion dance has even become a regular at political rallies and City Hall, with politicians hiring the makeshift lions to woo increasingly influential Chinese American voters. A majority of these shows are performed by Lau’s LionDanceME.
The battle began with a series of mistakes, a lack of communication and misunderstandings, participants say.
The standoff was triggered by the first permit from SFMTA. It only got worse after March 20, when the Entertainment Commission approved a permit that allows the dancers to take over the streets anytime from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays between April 6, 2024, and March 30, 2025.
As Peskin tries to negotiate a compromise between the two sides, a Board of Appeals hearing will take place Wednesday at City Hall on that Entertainment Commission’s permit. The appeal could thwart the lion dancers’ rights.
Grant Avenue is “the heart to Chinatown, right now the heart is stopped,” said Edward Siu, chairman of the Chinatown Merchants United Association.
In advance of Wednesday’s meeting, each side has collected more than 1,500 signatures to buttress their cases: LionDanceME gathered 1,714 and the merchants picked up 1,582.
The SFMTA admitted that it had made “an internal error” in putting up the signs advertising the closures on three blocks of Grant Avenue, according to Lau. For the past two years, Lau’s permit had technically allowed for all three to be closed, but he had only closed one. The possibility of three shuttered streets clearly upset merchants.
SFMTA put up the street-closure signs in early March. Both sides had a town hall talking about their opinions on March 13. March 20 the entertainment commission granted a new permit to LionDanceME, on the grounds that “there was no opposition from neighbors.”
That left the merchants feeling betrayed. Already, they felt they were not taken seriously in the decision; now it looked like Lau was being duplicitous.
Instead of seeking clarification with Lau, they filed an appeal. “It was a wild misrepresentation to claim there was no neighborhood opposition,” they wrote in their letter to the Board of Appeals. Lau denied any sneakiness, saying he applied for the Entertainment Commission permit in February, not after the town hall.
In a brief to the Board of Appeals, the Entertainment Commission said it was unaware of the March 13 community meeting, and had no knowledge of any neighborhood opposition when granting the permit.
What does each side want?
“We have never objected to the lion dance; we all love it. It is a distinctive Chinese culture,” said Jennifer Kwa, owner of a jewelry store Grant Avenue and one of more than 30 owners, mostly from the 800 block, who have signed their names on a brief submitted to the Board of Appeals.
But the extended street closures have negatively affected her business, she said. Kwa suggested that the lion dances be moved to Portsmouth Square or another nearby space.
“I don’t understand why they want to close the whole 600 to 900,” said Jian Ma, another owner on the 800 block, saying the troupe just needs one block to perform.
Alice Luong, owner of the Red Blossom Tea Company at 831 Grant Ave, who is acting as a “secretary” in the appeal, said the street closures would render her store inaccessible to disabled customers.
Dozens of residents who live on the upper floors of Grant Avenue have also signed the brief, according to Luong. Some are bothered by the noise caused by the lion dance, while others are concerned that the street closure would make it inconvenient for their children to park when visiting them.
For his part, Lau, the 48-year-old leader of the lion dance group, wonders how this conflict has gotten so messy in his home neighborhood. “I feel like I’m left to be a scapegoat,” he said.
He has visited merchants and offered to only close the 700 block of Grant, but was told it’s not enough.
“I’ve been trying to satisfy the situation for a long time,” he said. “It’s an unfair situation, but I welcome it with open arms and I try to learn from it how to not have this happen again.”
Lau started practicing lion dance at the age of 9, and founded LionDanceMe in 2012. The group has established a status in Silicon Valley. “Pretty much any tech company you could name — Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Lyft, Uber — I would say that 95 percent, we have done it,” he said.
“I want to leave a legacy bigger than Bruce Lee left for martial arts.”
Then why did he need to close the streets for two days for an hour-long performance?
“The street closure is not for me. The plan is that it’s a shared space that other people can use, like SRO families, people come to the community.” said Lau, who also runs Primed, a nonprofit that aims to cultivate a community for young people. “Shared spaces’ purpose is for people to have a car-free space to enjoy themselves,” he said.
Lau’s community involvement over the years has won him some supporters. Mindy Fong, owner of Jade Chocolate on the 600 block of Grant Avenue, said the street closures would attract tourists who “go in the middle of the streets [to take photos] anyway … instead of everyone honking at them and being frustrated, why don’t we just close it?”
What are the proposals?
In a letter to the San Francisco Board of Appeals, Lau proposed reducing the closure to Saturdays only, and the closure area from Grant Avenue between California and Washington streets to Grant between Sacramento and Clay.
He said he could also reduce the time period from one year to eight months — LionDanceME is too busy with performances during the Lunar New Year period anyway.
Siu, chair of the merchant association, is not optimistic about reaching a consensus on Wednesday.
Peskin hopes both sides can come to an agreement before today’s meeting. “Now that the city and communities are coming out of the pandemic, this is actually a good time for stakeholders to revisit the community’s strategy towards recovery,” he said. “I have been trying to bring community groups together to find a compromise that would serve Chinatown’s unique and diverse interests and needs.”
Thank you for this article! Some Chinatown merchants realize they can’t keep offering tourist trinkets that Fisherman’s Wharf also sells. Most merchants need to learn from Japantown’s failure and revival. It failed because it offered trinkets locals did not want. So locals stopped visiting. Japantown revived because the new owners enticed merchants from Japan who sold what was popular there and uncommon here: made in Japan specialties including snacks, fluff, and inexpensive household goods. Once locals returned they also attracted more sophisticated tourists. Occasional special events attracted even more visitors. Japantown would love to have lion dancers every weekend but it’s a Chinese tradition. Chinatown has only a handful of stores that would interest both locals and tourists (the Wok Shop, Kim+Ono, Jade Chocolate, On Waverly, etc.). The rest are still competing with Fisherman’s Wharf. I am there almost every day and know that even without street closures very few cars drive on Grant–this is not the Chinatown of 50 years ago. Merchants can blame street closures and lion dancers but it’s not why business is bad. Today’s tourists buy less trinkets. They prefer taking selfies, drinking boba, eating take-out dim sum, and strolling around–and I bet they prefer watching lion dance rehearsals than having to look one way before crossing an empty street. It’s not easy, but Merchants need to work harder and not blame others. Chinatown needs more cultural events such as lion dances and night markets–not fewer. It also needs more picturesque backdrops for selfies (more of those murals, please). A wasted once-in-a-lifetime opportunity can teach Chinatown a lesson: the subway station should have been designed to be a selfie-magnet to attract tourists (if it looked like the Man Mo Temple in Sheung Wan visitors would not stop staring). Chinatown and San Franciso can’t afford to let those opporunities go to waste again. Stay healthy and vote!
Exactly! Grant street during business hours is just a cheap tourist trap. T-shirt vendors en masse, trinket shops, restaurants offering pretty bad food is not enticing at all. The almost only positive point is are the visuals.
Yes, there are few exceptions, the above mentioned stores as well as Li-Po, the Buddha lounge, etc., but that is just not enough.
It’s mind boggling that the center of Chinatown is a food desert ( speaking of great food). It feels like the restaurants are just out to fleece the tourists.
Last winter i gave it a try and went to one of the upstairs places along Grant. Rundown and dirty, a place like that in KL, Bangkok, etc would still offer great food. Here in SF it’s rather sad. In this case the food was just terrible and the experience as well.
Btw, I prefer Grant Ave at night with those shops closed and really enjoy the nocturnal mood while ambling around.
Do small business owners ever fight for anything good? It seems they just try to fight for more parking and against community spaces these days.