Block Parties and Rare Vinyl Bring The NYC Chinatown Community Together

Rain or shine — or, in this case, yet another stifling New York heat wave — nothing will stand in the way of the city’s Chinatown summer block parties. On July 7, people braved the scorching heat with colorful parasols and paper fans, while others rested in the shade perched on blue plastic stools, chatting away until the sun set over the horizon of buildings in Lower Manhattan. 

Now, the real party can begin.

Under the twinkle of a disco ball securely slung over some metal scaffolding, DJ Rekha and YiuYiu 瑶瑶 take turns blasting South Asian and Chinese music out of a newsstand turned DJ booth on Mosco Street.

Cheers erupt from the dance circle that has formed, as a family makes their way to the center, the crowd waving their fans and clapping enthusiastically as the group shakes their shoulders and waves their arms to a series of classic Bollywood songs.

“We saw this family come through and, judging by what they were holding, they were just passing by and not planning to come to the block party,” said Yin Kong, director and co-founder of Think!Chinatown, a nonprofit organization in Chinatown that’s behind these parties. “There was the grandpa, the mom and dad, the kids, and they got in the middle of the circle and danced — it was super cute.”

Kong’s favorite moments are when people happen upon the block parties and “just feel inclined to come in and dance.” The block party in early July was no exception as passersby stopped to observe the outdoor dance floor, some nodding their heads and swaying their hips to the beats emerging from the short one-block street. 

These block parties unofficially emerged from the Corky in a Box exhibit back in 2020. A corner newsstand on Mosco Street — once known for the woman who sold egg cakes out of it — featured photography by beloved community member Corky Lee. Lee passed away the following year, and that very newsstand he held his last exhibit in became a site of remembrance and celebration for those who knew him. 

“It was really part of our grieving process to go back to this spot,” said Kong. “For a lot of [Lee’s] friends, it was the last time we saw or talked to him on the corner for that exhibition, and so that year — to fill the hole in our hearts — we played music out of the stand and we gathered there and we danced, and that’s kind of how it started.” 

Mosco Street — recently co-named Corky Lee Way — has become a gathering place for the yearly Chinatown summer block party series, the former newsstand now turned into a makeshift DJ booth. These parties are put together by the Chinatown Block Party 夏日傾情 team, which is made up of Think!Chinatown, Chinatown Records, a community-based music archive created by Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan (YiuYiu瑶瑶) in Chinatown, and 80X SET, a collective of artists in New York City fostering community across generations. Together, they recognize the communal quality of music, with Kong noting how “sound, music, really carries and transforms a space.”

This sentiment is carried on just around the corner of Mosco Street. Tucked away behind towers of books, a small banner depicting a tiger crouched in front of a record hangs against a wall. 

Below the sign, upcoming New York University junior Arya Pathak flips through a stack of vinyl, her fingers brushing past a Korean jazz-rock album, lo-fi from Singapore, and Mandopop from the ’70s. Her eyes suddenly widen behind her glasses and she lets out a disbelieved laugh, pulling a record out of the pile. 

“Oh my god, what? I can’t believe they have this,” said Pathak. “I used to watch this movie all the time with my parents.” 

In her hands is the soundtrack from the 1976 Bollywood movie Kabhi Kabhie — “It’s so iconic” — composed by Mohammed Zahur Khayyam. For a moment, Pathak can only stare at the album in awe before snapping a photo of it on her phone to show her family.  

“This [movie] came out before my parents were born so this is like their version of the ’90s movies I watched growing up,” said Pathak. “It honestly really helped me feel connected to them, especially my dad.”

How one simple record can elicit such a reaction out of people is what makes Deborah Oh love what she does. 

Oh has always adored music, her career spanning from musician, to songwriter, to music supervisor, but she came to realize how little she knew about non-western music. As she tried to discover a more diverse array of music from Asia, the Pacific, and the diaspora, she also learned just how restricted access to such music really was. 

She felt it was time to change that.  

And thus, with her limited knowledge of vinyl — “It’s all new and novel for me” — but deep passion for music and unbridled curiosity, she set out on a project to build her very own record collection from scratch. This endeavor would give birth to Year of the Tiger Records. 

“The project really kind of started from my own curiosity, and wanting to discover and learn about these musical heritages for myself,” Oh said. “But then in doing that leg work, I’m also able to be an access point for others who are interested in learning more, discovering more, and having more meaningful connections to music in that way.”

This is how Pathak stumbled across this record, a time capsule from her past, in a bookstore in Chinatown. Yu & Me Books is an Asian American woman-owned business, and its goal is to amplify immigrant stories and ensure that everyone feels represented in the literary sphere. It recently reopened in January after recovering from a devastating fire the previous year. To Oh, her collaboration with Yu & Me Books “just felt like it would make sense.”

Yu & Me Books was a big source of inspiration for Year of the Tiger Records, which is what prompted Oh to reach out to Lucy Yu, the founder of Yu & Me Books. She quickly discovered that Yu was very passionate about music — “she loves vinyl, she’s so into music” — and the two began collaborating and organizing pop-ups together.

“Books, music, it’s a natural sort of overlap,” said Oh.

Oh only began doing pop-ups last fall, but cherishes the hours she spends speaking to people and playing music for them on her portable record player. 

“Everything is so digital and over emails and streaming these days that it’s so refreshing to do everything in person,” Oh said. 

She especially loves when people discover personal connections to her vinyl collection. One customer recently emailed her saying that one of the vinyls they had purchased spurred them to ask their family questions about it, which led them to learn about their family history in a way that would not have been possible were it not for the record. 

“When I got that email I was just like, this is the dream, I could stop doing this tomorrow and I would still be happy,” Oh said. “Because that’s exactly what the kind of mission for Year of the Tiger is, just having that access and representation.” 

Oh is acutely aware of how, for the most part, record stores remain very white, male-dominated spaces, and can oftentimes feel daunting. This is why one of the main goals of Year of the Tiger Records is to foster a space that encourages curiosity, whether that be around music from the diaspora or even just vinyl itself. 

“I think it’s important to have female AAPI representation in the vinyl industry because a lot of record stores that I go to, I don’t feel like they’re spaces for me, you know?” Oh said. “You just feel like you don’t want to ask the wrong question or seem like you don’t know this or that.”

The name Year of the Tiger Records emerged from the fact that Oh, her mother, and both her grandmothers were all coincidentally born in the year of the tiger. To Oh, the name represents history and lineage in a way that she hopes her collection embodies and contributes to her mission of having female Asian American representation in spaces such as the vinyl community. 

“It was one of those things I was talking to my husband about and we were just batting around a bunch of different names,” Oh said. “I think I threw this one out almost as a joke but then the more I thought about it, the more I was like, no, this is actually perfect.”

After giving birth this past spring, Oh had to put the pop-ups on hold. But two shelves in a corner of Yu & Me Books is all Oh needs for her records to continue reaching others while she navigates motherhood. 

After perusing the shelves of Yu & Me Books for a while longer, Pathak heads toward the block party, following the sound of laughter and Chinese pop down to Corky Lee Way. She reunites with her friend and the pair share a pink parasol as YiuYiu 瑶瑶 leads them into a night of music and dance. By the end of the evening, they’re singing loudly along to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” 

“The best part [of the block parties] are those cathartic moments when we’re dancing together and belting our hearts out to songs that some of us knew from our parents, and some of us are getting to know through the block parties,” said Kong. “And just seeing friends and community members, having more opportunities to hang out with them and to just be happy and be together.”

Cover: Illustration by Lisa Wakiyama