Boston Chinatown Banquet - Combat Zone

The Combat Zone is an area within Chinatown that is legally zoned as an adult entertainment district. Deriving its name from the port-of-call sailors who frequented Boston for centuries, the Combat Zone was codified and moved to Washington Street to make way for Boston's new City Hall. During its heyday in the 1980's the area featured dozens of clubs and a non-stop night scene that compromised the quality of life in Chinatown. Although the Combat Zone has since declined, due to a combination of community activism, development and the advent of home video, efforts to move it completely have failed.

Storytellers: Neil Chin, Richard Chin, Tom Lee

Video footage: Mike Blockstein, Eun-Joung Lee, Kim Szeto

Interviews: Mike Blockstein, Victor Fong, Jackson Hau, Eun-Joung Lee, Peter Pang, Kim Szeto, Andrew Tong, Kathy Tran, Carol Wong, Kim Wong, Johnny Yong

Archival Video Courtesy of: Andrew Leong

Images courtesy of: The Bostonian Society, John Munsey Sr., The Sampan

Producer: Mike Blockstein

Editor: David Lawrence

A Chinatown Banquet is a series of short educational films about Boston Chinatown, sparking learning and dialogue across generations, disciplines and geography. The Banquet offers an unprecedented glimpse into the history, culture, and character of the neighborhood. This multimedia project highlights the Asian American experience and Chinese culture in Boston and was created as an educational tool by youth in the Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC or AsianCDC) Young Leaders Network (YLN) which has grown to become A-VOYCE (Asian Voices of Organized Youth for Community Empowerment). These "courses," offering a rich view of the forces that shaped and continue to influence Chinatown, consist of audio and video interviews with community members and others who offer insight into specific issues, interspersed with contemporary and historic footage, images and information, music and ambient sounds. As a part of the Chinatown Heritage Project, the Banquet is a compendium of Chinatown's history, political struggles, culture and physical environment and living conditions.

http://www.chinatownbanquet.org/index2.html
http://www.asiancdc.org/heritage/home.html
http://www.asiancdc.org/

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Boston
• Chinatown
• Asian
• American
• Chinese
• Culture
• Education
• Community
• Development
• Corporation
• ACDC

[bos78]

I don't think they'll stop until downtown is just one big wallgreens. Cities are better when people from the suburbs are afraid to go there.

[waitwhatwasthat]

is this the area that you have to keep a baseball bat in your car to ward off all the thugs trying to walk across your car?

[jevilscientist]

Use to go to the Liberty Bookstore II. Naked I Cabaret.Haymarket club.

[e8tballz]

U can still easily find drugs in that area at night.

[oldschoolbx1970]

@umbdude Same thing with NYC's Times Square,too.

[a13mac1]

Boston is a ghost town now I lived there for 11 years but had to move because its to depressing...

[umbdude]

I was lucky enough to be in my teens in the early 90s before the city tore down the remainings of the combat zone, but by then the big shops like Naked I was already gone. I had so much fun in the area...pilgrim, liberty...all those places.

now it feels like a dry town. Those luxury buildings never seem to fit into those few blocks in my opinion.

[MultiJohnson2]

just wondering, what year was this newsclip made?

what year is the old footage from?

[kingofallwhites]

@mellowsky47 yeah they come from good stock and they're so little and polite too

[kingofallwhites]

Bring back the Combat Zone in it's full former glory!!!

[wreckingball007]

Ohhh...the good ol' days.

[DevSodDribble]

@bundangbear Some cities need killing.