No Buzzkills: 2017

THE EMPRESS OF CHINA was a long-time 'rooftop' Chinese restaurant and bar that overlooked Chinatown in San Francisco. It was opened in 1966 and closed it's doors 48 years later on New Year's Eve 2014-2015 when the building it was housed in was sold and developed into office space.

It's décor and menu appeared to have changed very little over it's decades of existence. Besides the fabulous 5th-floor location and the fact that the banquet hall (housed a floor below the restaurant) had served as a center for family and neighborhood events like birthdays and weddings for the local Chinese community, the place was also exceptional because it felt like walking into a time machine. One could feel the history.

Nowhere was this more apparent than at the first floor lobby, where a multi-windowed display featured sun-bleached and fading photographs of the stars of yesterday that had visited the establishment on their trips to San Francisco. Most of these pictures appeared to be from the late 70s and 1980s, with a few from the 90s. The photo display appeared to be minimally touched since then, with the photos labeled with old-school hard plastic embossing tape labels!

My better half and I visited the EMPRESS OF CHINA in the fall of 2014 shortly before it's closing and were able to grab these pictures. They were taken on an iPhone so I'm sorry if they are not perfect, but we were surprised to see this. I was happy to capture it for historical purposes. The restaurant- it's decor, food and sugary drinks felt like something out of HAWAII 5-0, and this wall was like the list of guest-stars on an episode of THE LOVE BOAT or FANTASY ISLAND!