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Amapola to Mabuhay Gardens: Salamat Ness Aquino

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(Ness Aquino and I at the bar in the Mabuhay Gardens. I was too young to drink.)

My father had watched “Amapola,” the weekend Filipino variety show on channel 18 hosted by Ness Aquino and Amapola, a local celebrity that wore a beautiful Fiipino dress and sang for her TV audience. The show was always simple, with Ness and Amapola sitting on high backed rattan chairs as they spoke in Taglish. I never knew what was being said, but I watched the show with my father to be faithful to my Filipino blood.

About 5 years later, I would walk into Ness Aquino’s supper club, The Mabuhay Gardens, to watch the Dead Kennedys play a show. Ness looked at me and smiled as I told him I was half Filpino. He wanted to know why I was at a punk show, found out that I wrote about local bands and told me that I would never have to pay to watch another show in his club. He wanted to help local Filipino youths, and this was his way of helping me advance my little career.

Ness was always in the background at the Mabuhay Gardens. He would hang by the bar or towards the back area where the pinball machines and bathroom were located. Every so often, he would come by and ask how I was enjoying myself or the show. I never knew if he liked the music, but I suspect that never mattered to him. His supper club had been hijacked by a popular San Francisco punk scene, and the Mabuhay Gardens was ground central for bands such as the Dead Kennedys, Flipper, the Dils, the Avengers and even the milder Pearl Harbor and the Explosions.

Although he had an outside promoter booking the shows, Ness was still an involved, important figure at punk shows. He would always provide free food from his kitchen for our fundraisers, and he would take to the stove and start cooking Filipino foods such as pancit or rice. Sometimes he would cook adobo. He would always let us use his kitchen, and helped us menu plan. Most people who hung out at the Mabuhay on the week nights had little money to spend, and Ness wanted to make sure that our buffets offered plenty of food.

Ness was my second father. He was so happy when I became at DJ at KUSF, and he did anything to accommodate me. He let me go backstage to introduce myself to bands, which most likely angered the Mabuhay’s promoter, Dirk Dirksen. Ness also let my friends into the club for free.

There was another part to Ness that had nothing to do with the Mabuhay Gardens or loud, raucous music. He was a successful businessman, a representative of a Filipino community that I knew existed but which I had little contact. He was, in fact, the Filipino Cesar Ascarrunz, the former owner of Cesar’s Palace down in the Mission who would let anyone use his giant night club for free so long as there was not a show taking place. Both men were exceedingly generous and kind, and true civic leaders to their communities.

Ness seemed to nullify all those years my Filipino heritage seemed to curdle under my mother’s constant derision of my father’s ethnicity. There were a few times when he spoke to me of Filipino things, which I took as lessons. Most of all, his kindness reminded me of what my own father might have been like had I been born when he was younger, and before my mother’s endless tirades bulldozed and separated him enjoying our family.

I tried to tell my father about Ness and the Mabuhay Gardens, and he just never grasped the whole punk club thing. It was clear that he never understood what I tried to tell him. Instead, he was under the impression that I would be making a guest appearance on Amapola. At least he seemed proud.

(c)2014 Slow Suburban Death.  All rights reserved

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