But kids pack the dance floor, their white tank tops soon to be soaked through with sweat.Īs with any success, Hashbarger's clubs have spawned competition. With high-energy music blaring, you almost wish Hashbarger had opted for a smooth, underground hideaway feel with plush couches and dark corners. The downstairs dance floor gets a more typical treatment-exposed brick, a low ceiling and hardwood floors. The upstairs lounge is dominated by a set of wall screens providing an ongoing light show, bathing the tastefully adorned room in soft shades of yellow, red and ocean blue. The interior designed by John Lum is all high gloss and international glamour. At a recent pre-opening party, Asia SF mostly lived up to the hype. Hashbarger is a man who speaks in superlatives. The most extraordinarily fabulous destination spot in San Francisco." "The premier nightlife experience in the city. "A landmark entertainment venue," he says. In fact, the club has been so successful, Hashbarger plans to open a new bar-lounge restaurant-dance club called Asia SF at Ninth and Howard. Club Asia still packs them in every first and third Friday of the month. It screams, 'Thailand sex-vacation.' "īut it's hard to argue with the numbers. You've got Asian boy dancers with white guys stuffing cash in their crotches. But somehow the whole thing started to feel creepy. "It was nice to have an alternative to the N'Touch. "In the beginning, it was cool," says a lapsed Club Asia fan, who prefers to remain anonymous. Yet some in the gay Asian community are put off by what they see as Hashbarger's objectification of Asian men. "If you want an intense dance experience on Friday nights, Club Asia is the place to be." "And not just Asian guys," Hashbarger is quick to point out. The club has been enormously popular, consistently drawing guys from all over the Bay Area. In Club Asia, San Francisco's queer Asian sons finally had a big-league dance party to call their own. This may be true, but the bulk of the crowd is homegrown. "I've met people from all over the world at my club." "We have an international clientele," Hashbarger says. With pulsating techno music, scantily clad muscle hunks and go-go dancers gesticulating wildly, Club Asia looks a lot like most of the large, weekly gay-boy dance parties in San Francisco. So three years ago Hashbarger opened Club Asia, a twice-monthly mega-dance club located at King Street Garage, 174 King St. "One little bar on Polk Street catered to Asian guys and that was it. "San Francisco has the highest Asian population of any city in North America," says Hashbarger.
And it was during another tired crawl through San Francisco's gay club circuit that Hashbarger finally decided to act.
His grand ideas were refined over dinner at Lucky Chang's, the famous Asian drag supper club in New York. ON A TRIP THROUGH SOUTHEAST ASIA, Larry Hashbarger first felt the inspiration. Club owner Larry Hashbarger's Asian odyssey