This is Dim Sum Club

The dim sum club is the special projects arm of Lunch Box. Our team is at this moment at work on zines, stickers, investigations, a podcast, and an event. It’s also a lab for the more ambitious, experimental journalism I’d like to do. One idea I’m working on is a series which I apply for historical preservation on behalf of important but ignored community institutions like swap meets and liquor stores.

Dim sum club members are also collaborators, and you’ll get a semi regular report on what I’m working on, seeking your feedback, ideas and story suggestions.

Basically joining the dim sum club means you support me, like drive-to-the-SGV-at-10 a.m. support me. It also means I’m very grateful to you, like let-you-order-the-egg-tarts grateful. Your membership lets me think big and do the slower work that journalism requires. It will also will also come with free merch and sticker drops - more about that down the line.

Dim Sum Club is modeled after a real life dim sum club that I host in the San Gabriel Valley. The original club is essentially a bureaucratic cudgel I created three years ago to shame and pressure my friends into driving out for brunch more often. It was an attempt to socially engineer better attendance at dim sum disguised as an exclusive dining club, with farcical demotions and outlandishly punitive censures for those who couldn’t make it, for whatever reason. Anyone can join but attendance is mandatory and there are no excused absences.

It’s mostly a joke - I’ve spent a lot of time creating lower membership tiers for all the demotions I’ve handed out. But I keep it up because I like the idea of a standing opportunity to see each other a bit more often in a city where everyone flakes too much. And I take as many opportunities as I can to bask in the grandeur of the San Gabriel Valley's dim sum restaurants, these vast suburban palaces that seat up to 900 and have such huge staffs that they’re often among the top employers in their cities.

Dim sum restaurants are special to me even though I didn’t grow up around them. But several times a year, my family would drive from Nashville, TN to Atlanta, GA to eat dim sum and shop at the Ranch 99.

As I got older I came to admire how these restaurants for their sheer size, range and variety. Their menus are like living museums for Southern Chinese and Silk Road flavors. And as business they are majestic but fragile; clanking juggernauts of steam, steel and spinning plates operated by small uniformed armies that can be defeated, after decades, by a $2,000 dollar maintenance bill.

As a reporter I saw how they functioned as rough barometers for the health of a Chinese American community. With such high food and labor costs, it’s impossible to stay in the black without steady event business. Dim sum survives on luncheons, banquets, benefits and weddings. It’s why their design can be so elaborate - it reflects the fee they hope to charge.

But if the community thrives - if people get married, host fundraisers, create institutions and put on events - so do the restaurants. In that way, dim sum is a lot like newspapers. It’s a commercial enterprise that cannot hope to survive without serving as a community institution. That’s pretty much my pitch for Lunch Box.