A night at the club where queer Asian Americans no longer feel like ‘black sheep’

Andrew Ahn’s father once told him that there were “no gay people in Korea.” Ahn was so afraid of his parents’ reaction if he came out to them that he had a backpack and a friend on standby in case he needed to leave. “Finding places like GAMeBoi, where being queer and Asian does co-exist … It’s not like a 1,000-year-old Korean cultural ritual, but I could create a new ritual,” said Ahn, 37. “If we get our face out there, then people will start taking us a little more seriously.” Donny Vu, center-left, and Jon dance at QT Nightlife’s K-Pop Night at Micky’s West Hollywood. In 2019, then-West Hollywood Mayor John Duran argued that he did not inappropriately touch a member of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles because “he’s a skinny Korean kid with pimples on his cheek.” Asian American advocacy groups criticized Duran’s remark, with API Equality-LA pointing to the long history of discrimination against Asian men in gay communities such as West Hollywood, whose clubs “used to require three forms of photo identification from anyone they perceived as Asian.” Duran eventually resigned from his position as mayor, citing health reasons, after several other allegations of sexual harassment. Events like the K-Pop Night are “liberating,” said Shu Mai, who also hosts Send Noodz, an Asian American/Pacific Islander drag party, with fellow queen Bibi Discoteca.