I first noticed Bruce Lee by his bright, lucky-red awning.
Bruce Lee boasts 4 dishes and 1 soup, 4 platos y 1 sopa, for a price under 5 dollars- 50 cents cheaper, if you decide to take out and do the eating elsewhere. I chuckled. It was a Sunday afternoon in early October and I decided to take the 5th Avenue route back home after my light run around Sunset Park. The Bruce Lee Restaurant seemed to have sprouted out of nowhere, taking up the corner of 50th Street next to the new, glistening Duane Reed, and sticking out among the panaderias, taco spots, and grilled corn vendors that make up this mostly Latino business avenue. Bruce Lee makes no move to incorporate “Spanish” in his Chinese cuisine like the other 5th Ave Chinese-owned restaurants, where a side of plátanos comes with your pork fried rice. Nor can Bruce Lee fit 3 avenues away on 8th Ave where the Chinese restaurants are so Chinese, English letters are foreign signage; and if you’re Chinese-illiterate like me, restaurants are differentiated by the color of the awnings. Yellow is the color of my favorite Cha siu bao place.
As I walked into Bruce Lee to grab a paper menu, I surveyed the swelled buffet carrying chicken nuggets to steamed fish, and thought of the Eucharist. Against the standard restaurant cling-clang, Spanish filled the air with intermittent exchanges of broken English between the Chinese workers and Latino customers. Here, housed inside an internationally recognized Chinese-American icon, is the exchange of fragments: words, culture, food, and money. On the outside, Bruce Lee sits conspicuously on 5th Avenue, almost prescient of future change with more and more Chinese-owned businesses springing in nearby areas commonly Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Mexican. This change, whether it is foreseen as a “sprawling” Chinatown or more integrated Latino and Chinese business community, may be sensed through quirks or strange encapsulations of name, awning, storefront, design, etc. Is Bruce Lee driven by business sense shaped by a use of American culture that affords the stranger minority friendliness, or is it simply a passion for martial arts? All are possibilities called into question by a curious chuckle during the lunchtime rush.
Photography Store and Studio across Bruce Lee Restaurant
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