Any enthusiastic traveler visiting a country in the tropics appreciates the sultry, sexy feel of air stifled by heat, sweat, garbage, and curry. Such areas operate slowly yet harbor a vibrant, steamy energy one takes in through the pores of the skin. Strange foods, people close in your face, livestock at your feet, roads that make no sense — the beauty exists in the chaos.

Six degrees of separation doesn’t seem possible in places like that. How could two friends I tell trace themselves in six steps to the aged, broken men playing chess on overturned milk crates outside a crumbling pho shop in the Pham Ngu Lao neighborhood of Ho Chi Minh City? The tropical world often feels like another world. Even the common seems uncommon, and yet, that’s exactly what travelers search for when in such places.

The Roman philosopher Seneca said, “Voyage, travel, and change of place impart vigor.”
The Lincoln District in Tacoma occasionally comes close to meeting this vitality.

Sit inside Vien Dong restaurant sipping a cold French coffee thick with condensed milk while sweating out green curry one bite at a time on an 80-degree late morning with the door propped open to let in the sounds of rushing cars and giggling children — and you’ll discover Tacoma features more than shiny new condos and $38 steaks. And especially when comparing this business district to trendy and sustainable districts such as Proctor, Sixth Avenue and Stadium, it’s easy to feel a trip to the Lincoln area is worlds away.

The Vietnamese have a saying: “One often gets what one disdains.”

The problem is scorn remains in the eye of the beholder.

Hear John Hathaway describe things and Tacoma’s Lincoln District sounds like the poor stepchild of Tacoma’s other business districts. A native and current resident of the district, Hathaway (best known for his political gadfly-like Web site www.thenewtakhoman.com where he broke wide-open the David Brame case) laments the demise of the blue-collar Lincoln area that gave way to Vietnamese restaurants and shops, gang violence, and a failed business model.

Talk to missionaries living in the neighborhood and Hathaway sounds like a crazy man. These members of SOMA Communities describe the area with words of hope, energy and excitement. They point to positive changes. They believe community is alive — though they see no place for panhandling drunks.

Ask the city official responsible for the area’s business districts and she’s not sure if anyone will step forward to bring the district back fully on line.

The Vietnamese have another saying: “After the storm the sun comes out.”

Like our spring, clouds still hang over the Lincoln District.

So why talk about this now? In two weeks, the largest blot on the Lincoln District’s calendar revisits from the past. Our nation’s birthday also marks the 10th anniversary of the Trang Dai massacre, which shook the neighborhood to its feet — a sucker punch that some say still impedes the area from moving forward. On July 4, 1998, members of the Loc’d Out Crips, seeking revenge on a member of the Vietnamese Ghetto Boys, lit up the Trang Dai at 3800  Yakima South with roughly 60 rounds of  bullets killing five and wounding five — mostly innocent victims (for a detailed account, click on www.wahmee.com/trangdai.html).

Just about everyone “disdains” actions like that.

Inside An-Hing’s Chinese Herbs and Grocery, folks, mostly Asian, suppressing coughs or hunched over in pain wait for Aaron Wong and his father, Trieu, to mix and match dried herbs and other remedies stored inside tiny little drawers lining the back counter — all in the effort to provide relief to the inflicted. Walgreens it’s not. Here, ancient remedies passed down for millennia connect the area’s largely Vietnamese community with their home country.

“We’ve been here 18 years,” Wong says, pointing around the store packed to the rafters with boxes, pots and bags marked mostly in Chinese lettering.

Name an illness and the recipe for respite can be found in the books Wong and his father have on hand. They shuffle about adding a pinch of this and that to make teas to take home.
Wong says more than Vietnamese visit his shop — other Asians, even local Caucasians come to him for help. Like many 30-somethings in the area, Wong is a second generation American who arrived with his folks during a mass exodus of Vietnam.

Known as the boat people, a term coined in the mid-1970s when thousands of Vietnamese people fled their war-torn country on boats headed anywhere else as the North Vietnamese Army swept down into the South after the United States turned tail and ran, it’s believed that roughly one million refugees have arrived on the shores of the United States since that time.
In Pierce County, many settled in the Lincoln District. Shops, restaurants and professional services soon followed, and in time the district took on the image of a Southeast Asian neighborhood. An-Hing’s is one of many Vietnamese or Asian establishments that grew out of that great escape.

Try walking from 36th and Yakima to 38th and Yakima without one of three things happening: stepping over garbage, smelling something rotting, or meeting a wigged-out panhandler. You can’t.

Hathaway remembers when an apartment building in this area stood as a testament of wealth.

“It was at Yakima and 39th Street, three to four stories, and at the time it was primo living — upscale with incinerator chutes on each floor,” he says of the area in the 1950s.

The Lincoln District no longer rolls like that.

The area hemmed in by Pacific Avenue to the east, 64th to the south and Interstate 5 wrapping around the rest bakes or melts in shades of brown depending on the weather.  A Sept. 14, 2004 story in The News Tribune quotes business owners excited about a potential resurgence in the district. Four years later not much has changed.

The Frisbee Bakery space remains empty; vacant lots wither in weeds, and sidewalks crack under the pressure of a thousand moods. Charming in Southeast Asia — challenging in America.

Fifteen years ago local business people thought this neglect had seen its last days as they joined the Tacoma Business District program.

Under the auspices of the Tacoma Economic Development Department, the City of Destiny maintains 14 business districts. The city has won national recognition for the plan. The program began in 1991 with six neighborhood districts, which included Lincoln. Today, shoppers flock to wine bars, boutiques, bistros, and salons in Proctor, Stadium, Old Town, Sixth Avenue, and Upper Tacoma. Success stories — every one.

The Lincoln area rode for years on the hope that international packaging under the direction of the Business District program might erase its urban blight. Beautiful red street signs popped up in the ’90s at all four corners; merchants banded together, and holidays such as Tet received event status.

In fact, before the Trang Dai massacre, folks felt the area surging forward.

“It’s been on a virtual upgrade,” Donald O’Donnell, then manager at Lincoln Bowl, told reporters just following the shooting.

Tet remains, but the energy uniting the businesses long fizzled out like a spent firecracker. Right now, no one wants to step forward and lead the way in the Lincoln area.

According to Kala Dralle, current manager of Tacoma’s Business District program, the city mostly helps those who help themselves. The city offers services to Lincoln including free architectural support, plus a trash cleanup program led by the juvenile justice system, but the rest is in the hands of the merchants.

If Lincoln has a success story, you can taste it at Vien Dong on the corner of Yakima and 38th Street. Originally owned by Kevin Le’s in-laws, today the 40-something calls the popular eatery his own. Le fled Vietnam with his folks in 1975. Identifying with America more than his native land, when not eating at his own place or at home, Le admits he would rather eat a Big Mac or visit Red Lobster.

For many foodies in the South Sound, Le’s curries trump anything McDonald’s can produce. His place ranks high among discerning taste buds. Considered by food critics in this fine rag as well as by others as the epitome of Vietnamese excellence, the proof lies in a packed house at lunchtime split down the middle between Asian and Caucasian customers.

Vien Dong is one of the few places that brings white people from outside the area.

Shabby and not chic, Vien Dong could fool a blind person into thinking he’s been transported to Vietnam. The servers banter in their native language. The food not only looks authentic, it smells it. And a certain confusion created by foreign foods and language feels chaotic. The place exemplifies the potential the district holds for drawing those hungry for cultural experience. But Le, who once attended and helped organize district events, admits a lack of business commitment both from within and around the neighborhood to make things better.

Le wonders if the murders at Trang Dai extended beyond the walls of the popular karaoke club and killed the mood — slowly but methodically. He says following Trang Dai the community fell into a collective depression, and when the sun came back out merchants seemed to lack the will to continue as a group. Slowly, what remained was a yearly Tet festival led by an independent organization.

The business association officially disbanded in 2003 after years of neglect. At the time, Jim Stevenson, owner of Lincoln Bowl, told The News Tribune, “I don’t have time to work a district when I am trying like hell to stay open.”

Stevenson closed the bowling alley last year after attempts to find a buyer proved fruitless.
Hathaway sees the Trang Dai shooting as history.

“It doesn’t have any impact anymore,” he adds.

Hathaway blames the city of Tacoma for not doing more to re-energize the district.

“The other districts get what they want,” Hathaway complains. “The Lincoln area is like the poor stepchild.”

According to Dralle, three of the 14 districts currently lack organized leadership — Lincoln, Portland Avenue and Oakland Madrona.

“I can tell you that over the past two years some of the (Lincoln) business owners have come together for meetings about streetscape guidelines and to coordinate the Tet Festival,” Dralle says. “They have committed to continuing both of those dialogs with us, so I expect we will hold occasional meetings in the future.”

Dralle says the Lincoln businesses are too busy to stay organized.

“The districts that lack associations are districts that have really hardworking, dedicated-to-their-own business folks who would take umbrage to the use of any description that makes them seem less than that,” she says. “They simply lack time to commit unrealistically to more volunteer work. I know ’cause I was one of those hardworking business owners once, and it is a huge commitment to make. I think it is fair to say that the districts that seem more successful with their volunteer organizations are the ones that also have more large shops and restaurants, where the owners can assign the volunteer work or can leave managers or employees to run the shop while the owner volunteers.”

Some say that businesses “going their own way” is cultural, that Vietnamese shopkeepers distrust each other and won’t come together in the future. No one would go on the record with those sentiments (though I heard it at least six times); however, there remain plenty of non-Vietnamese businesses in the district to question the logic.

Christian missionaries arrived in Vietnam around the early 16th century, first from Portugal and later France. American churchgoers made their mark much later, establishing missions around the 1830s.

Missionaries of a different flavor are finding hope and community inside the Lincoln District. SOMA (tacoma.somacommunities.org), a Greek word for “body,” means to this Tacoma-based fellowship of Christians a place to worship God through witness, food, gathering, and the everyday physical expression of Jesus Christ.

In the Lincoln area, SOMA families moved in to be good neighbors in a place that could use some.

Todd and Sondra Chamberlain joined SOMA and moved from Seattle to the Lincoln District five years ago. They started meeting their neighbors and discovered a true passion for the area.

“We love this area,” Sondra says. “We support the local businesses as much as possible, often finishing our gatherings at Vien Dong’s.”

Writing on SOMA’s Web site, Todd talks of participating in National Night Out.

“This year we had 120 nametags, and we ran out. It’s been amazing to see the transformation, the community we have with our neighbors, and how we take care of each other. We wanted to celebrate that, join with them, serve them, and we wanted to meet any of the neighbors that we hadn’t met already. Now we know the names of the people on our block and a few other blocks.”SOMA followers believe in gathering as community — sharing food and drink, even pipes.

“Another way we’ve gotten to know some guys from the neighborhood is our unofficial tobacco pipe club,” Todd says. “Friends bought me a pipe a few years ago, and then we bought a neighbor a pipe for his birthday. After that, another friend bought the most expensive pipe he could to show us up. One night we had six or seven people from other blocks too. The funny thing is we’ve ended up talking about marriage almost every time we’ve gotten together. Several people have gotten back with their ex-spouses. It’s not like I’ve planned to come talk about something; it’s just happened. It’s not hard to celebrate like this.”

It didn’t take long, however, for the Chamberlains to hear of the shooting at Trang Dai when they moved in around 2003.

Like Le, Todd wonders if the shooting still impacts the business climate in the area.
“The businesses don’t all seem to be working together much,” he adds.

Todd and Sondra say they don’t see themselves living in a Vietnamese community.

“Our neighbors are not all Vietnamese,” Todd adds.

Hathaway sees changes in the demographics as well. In fact, Lincoln’s chance to fully capitalize on drawing South Sounders to the area based on its Asian flavors may have come and gone.

“I believe in the near future this area will go from being a Vietnamese community to a Hispanic community,” Hathaway says.

East of the Lincoln area that’s taken place already. Inside the Lincoln area, a taco truck recently took permanent residence at the corner of 38th and G Street.

Philly Inc. also opened in the past year. It caters mostly to African Americans, according to the owner, who saw a need to serve the underserved. Down the street, another place catering to blacks, Uncle Thurm’s Soul Food, opened the year before that.

“I chose this area because I saw a need for some place to serve black people,” says Ronnie Roston, owner of Philly Inc. “My focus is on black neighbors; it’s nice to have some place to eat other than Vietnamese food.”

Roston says he’s not familiar with the Tacoma Business District program and isn’t sure he’d join anyway.

A messy sidewalk, vacant storefronts and lack of business togetherness, however, seem the least of people’s worries these days. Unlike many of the other business districts, the Lincoln area suffers a plague of panhandling alcoholics.

Residents have pushed to make the area an Alcohol Impact Area, meaning banning the sale of certain low-price, high alcohol content brands of alcohol such as Olde English 800.
The Chamberlains have worked diligently to make the Lincoln District an AIA.

“Our hope is to see less opportunity for those with addictions to alcohol to buy the stuff,” Todd says.

The Chamberlains live across the street from an elementary school.

“Three times I’ve called the police because of drunks passed out on the playground there,” Todd says.

The Washington State Liquor Control Board is expected to meet in mid-July to hear testimony on the issue.

But crime in general appears less of a problem these days — certainly nothing along the lines of Trang Dai. According to statistics from Tacoma Police Department’s Sector 4 (which includes the Lincoln area), only one of the area’s major incidences in April took place in the Lincoln area. A man in his 20s attempted to lure a 14-year-old girl into his Jeep Wrangler. A case of youth destroying property was the only other report that month. The vast majority of the sector’s issues take place across Pacific Avenue in East Tacoma.

Todd says crime remains low from his vantage point as well, and he believes an AIA would move the district forward several more steps.

The $75 million renovation of Lincoln High School, completed in 2007, stands out clearly as another step in the right direction. Ornate glass and wood doors and halls reminiscent of the original school that opened in 1914 combine with 21st-century technology to give hope to a fledgling community.

Other good news in the district includes the Community Based Services program.

According to a June 6 story in the Weekly Volcano, officials in charge of the program say their guiding principle is to clean up neighborhoods, reduce crime and build community — including in the Lincoln District.

Edwina Magram joined several dozen people recently at Lincoln High School to plan an attack on blight. She and other volunteers used several city-supplied dumpsters to clean up the yards of 70 homes in the area.

Tacoma City Manager Eric Anderson recently announced plans to reduce crime in the city by 50 percent. To accomplish that goal, he understands it takes more than cops — citizens must join the effort.

“Government always has built roads, enforced codes and pulled together civic and business groups, but we often focused on one issue or government service at a time, overlapping efforts by chance or for a limited purpose,” reads the City of Tacoma Web site. “This new way recognizes that government services shouldn’t come in one size or one at a time, but should be delivered comprehensively. We believe this approach helps provide more permanent solutions.”

The Lincoln District’s business owners may sit on the sidelines, but some residents, such as Magram, refuse to stand by and let the area continue on its decrepit path.

As for Hathaway, while he appears frustrated with the development of his community, he admits he wouldn’t leave the Lincoln District for anything.

“This is home,” he says. “You know what I mean by that? It’s where I am from.”

Maybe, like for any traveler worth his salt, that’s enough to know when visiting a place like no other. On the 10th anniversary of Trang Dai, folks like Hathaway, the Chamberlains, Le, and the Wongs still call the place home. They hope the best for the place, and best of all, we don’t need a plane ticket to go cheer them on.