the story of Cho's kweejibo clothing co., a men's shirtmaker and shop, all locally manufactured, San Francisco, California, 1992-2009
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"mafia"
i go to see Alice, my sewing contractor, and a man opens the door who is not Chinese. in ten years, only Chinese people have ever answered my knock. Alice is not there. the man's behavior is a strange combination of supplicating, yet threatening. he has definitely scary men with him. they have "taken over the space". they hold all of the fabric stock of Alice's clients hostage, including my irreplaceable two hundred bolts. it takes years to assemble this collection in its variety and complexity.
when the new "boss" cannot talk me into investing in the new enterprise that he is setting up in Alice's place, he threatens to refuse to release my fabric. he says, "how do i even know this is all yours?" he changes his version of reality several times. He tries to discredit Alice. he says, "i saw Alvin, Alice's husband, trying to sell off your fabrics this morning. their business is going down the tubes, so they are trying to sell their clients' fabrics for extra cash. imagine cheating their clients when they own apartments and real estate!" i have no idea what he is talking about.
and where is Alice? i call my boyfriend Peter. he grabs his friend Kurt and a U-haul truck, and they arrive in less than two of the longest hours of my life. they try to talk me into making them shirts. one man, scary, very broad and unattractive, asks Peter and Kurt, "are you students?" oh, how we work as fast as we can to move two hundred bolts, many being awkward and heavy, out onto the truck. possibly they permit me as i have the largest collection and they wonder privately, what they shall do with all this stuff.
Alice's warehouse has been like a second home to me for so long. it occupies a soft spot in my heart as the home of all my lovely goods and a kind of labyrinthine playground of enormous mounds of bolts. The bolts of other clients are endearing to me even when huge white terrycloth rolls leave a fine layer of dust on all my fabric. this is the home of Alice, who is beautiful to me even when her face is covered most of the time by a protective cloth mask.
many of Alice's clients keep an informal arrangement with her. we benefit from the lack of need to transport or house our own goods. everyone trusts her implicitly, none of her clients actually have papers that indicate what belongs to them. no one has ever needed to worry until the mafia showed up. property situated in this fashion is uninsurable. insured goods must be kept separate, locked, per individual policy. Alice's men run through my stock constantly, returning bolts, picking out new ones.
Alice calls me the next day. she showed up for work the morning before and found her own locks changed. she signed a lease sharing her space with mr. mafia, a man who she thought was her friend. she was unaware that he set up the contract so he could take over the whole space. originally, he had wormed his way into her confidence, told her she was his best friend. things got ugly when she refused to do leather garments for him, as her machines could not handle it.
Alice has already set up a new workshop, a well-lit much livelier, smaller place. it is located in her own building. she has somehow miraculously hung onto our valuable markers, if not our actual hard-copy shirt patterns. business continues as usual?
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