Hey there, quick word of warning here at the top. In this show, I'm talking to a real

honest to goodness New Yorker, and that means he curses a little bit. So, you've been warned.

Here's some things you need to know about Carlin Chan. He's a New Yorker through and through. He can hear it in his

voice. And something else. He reps Chinatown hard. On Saturday mornings, he gets up and sweeps the

streets. He's been working to get murals put up. He's lived here for 60 years.

With Chinatown, well, I grew up here.

I moved into the neighborhood and I was a toddler, two, two and a half or whatever.

And I've been here since.

I get the sense I could like blindfold you and like walk you out the door, like go down a couple of streets and you still know exactly where we were.

Probably, yes. If I know where the starting point is, I can probably navigate through the

streets, you know, blindfold it. As long as you stop the traffic, I'm willing to try it.

As a kid, Carlin worked in one of the restaurants here, a dim sum place, with the little

carts of food being pushed around,

Hong Kong style.

Chinat was a 24-7 neighborhood.

We had the neon lights going on my street and, you know, tourists, like morphs.

Everybody's drawn to the bright lights, you know I mean.

He's been thinking back on that time because it was one of the first times he had an experience

dealing with anti-Asian hate.

We had certain people who try to, you know, mug people or we have people who are racist

in nature coming in to harass the restaurants.

And, you know, at the time, you know, we escorted them out of the neighborhood in no, you know,

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