Sifting the Inner Belt 篩羅內環 Tamizando el Cinturón Interno:

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Mills Gallery
Exhibition June 17 – July 31, 2005

Berkeley Street Community Garden Links

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Artists and Authors

catherine D'Ignazio a.k.a. kanarinka
New media artist interested in collaboration, community and public space.

Contact Info:
144 Moody Street
Building 4, 4th Floor
Waltham, MA 02453
phone: (617)501-2441
email: kanarinka@ikatun.com
Hiroko Kikuchi
A performance and public artist. Originally from Tokyo, Japan. Her work explores the formative and communicative meaning of everyday activities as a mutual "language," influenced by the social environment, tradition, and aesthetics which all co-exist within confining behavioral structures. For the last 2 years, she has been working on creating a protocol to address social and cultural matters by re-structuring the concept and form of performance art.

Contact Info:
57 Boylston St. #3 Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
phone: (617)905-6323
email: tonchinkandesu@yahoo.com
Jeremy Chan Peng Chu
Singapore born, artist and photographer, explores cultural space production in-between the processes of change, interested in Chinese diasporal space and collaborative practice.

54 Clarendon Street Level 1
Boston MA 02116
phone: (617) 375 6399
email: chu_jeremy@yahoo.com
Jeremy Chi-Ming Liu
Director of Community Programs at the Asian Community Develpment Corporation, public artist, activist

57 Boylston St. #3
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
fax: (617) 482-3056
email: jeremy@asiancdc.org
Kim Szeto
Student at Wheaton College (Norton, MA) pursuing a self designed major in Environmental Studies.

cell: 617-957-5087
email: kszeto@wheatonma.edu
Natalie Loveless
artist, critic and theorist interested in dialogic space, performance practice, critical and cultural theory.

Contact Info:
History of Consciousness Ph.D. Program
University of California at Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
phone: (617) 549-3239
email: natalie@loveless.ca
William H. Ho
Community Organizer and photographer interested in how urban spaces affect and interact with the public

Asian Community Development Corp.
888 Washington St., Suite 102
Boston, MA 02111
phone: 617-953-1288
fax: 617-482-3056
email: william@asiancdc.org

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Getting a toehold

Cleaning nails opens doors for many Vietnamese

By Thuy-Doan Le and Garance Burke -- Bee Staff Writers
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, September 12, 2004

The glass door at Anna Nails bears an American flag. It swings open to a sparkling clean salon lined with low counters filled with racks of polish, manicuring stations and, any place the eye lingers, more American flags.

Inside this small shop, where Vietnamese flows like a song, owner Anna Tran spends 60 hours a week scrubbing feet, buffing calluses and polishing acrylic nails - living her version of the American Dream with each manicure or pedicure.

Count her business in Sacramento's South Land Park as one of thousands of small outposts where Vietnamese immigrants have capitalized on a specialty, challenging full-service salons in the nation's $6.53 billion nail care industry.

In California, Vietnamese American entrepreneurs own up to 80 percent of the nail shops, according to the trade magazine Nails. Although embarking in the field with limited English skills, they have embraced hard work and long hours to give customers a cut-rate option for pampering hands and feet.

"I came here with empty hands, and I built the shop with the support of my husband," said Tran.

After emigrating from Vietnam, Anna Tran, above left, and top, at her Sacramento shop, found a livelihood in her adopted country by giving manicures and pedicures. She set up her own shop six years ago. The business has helped send her five daughters, including Ann Le, seated above left, Vinh Le, center, and Kim Hop Le, to college.

• See additional images

Sacramento Bee/Renée C. Byer

"We tell our children that we left home for their future, so they have to be educated," she said. "I used my own hands and strength to do this."

Doing nails is hard work. Staying in the same position for hours can lead to repetitive strain injuries, and workers can be exposed to disease and, if regulations aren't followed, dangerous chemicals.

Still, for customers seeking affordable pampering, roughly $25 for a manicure-pedicure combination fills the bill.

Nationwide, the average price for a manicure is $15.42 and the average price for a pedicure $29.83, said Hannah Lee, executive editor of Nails magazine. She considers a discount nail shop to be any place that offers services for less than half the price of the industry average.

"Especially in California, it seems like there's a nail salon on every corner," Lee said. "Some salons feel they have to keep prices low to compete, but others think, 'I offer what I need to offer and charge what I want.' "

She said she's heard of businesses eliminating nail services because they can't compete with discount salons. Lee said, however, that they don't have to compete at the lower level.

"They need to find a niche," she said. "There will always be someone paying a little more for a little more service."

Americans spent $6.53 billion for nail salon services in 2002, up 67 percent from 10 years ago, according to Torrance-based Nails magazine.

The number of licensed manicurists has surged 65 percent to 84,008 since 1991, said the California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology. Many of these immigrants sought jobs in nail care to get a better life for themselves and their families.

Tran's eyes well up with tears as she describes life in Vietnam. She said she and her husband were living in Nha Trang when the country fell to the communists in 1975. Soon afterward, the new government sent her husband, a lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Navy, to a rural prison camp for "re-education," Tran said.

The years apart were painful, personally and economically. Tran said she sold fabric in Saigon, a city that was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, to make enough money to visit her husband. People often stole from her, she said.

When her husband was released, the family fled Vietnam by boat, eventually arriving in the United States in 1984.

Like many Vietnamese immigrants, Tran never imagined she could make money from nail care.

"In Vietnam, people keep their real nails and just clean them," she said. "Here, we do fake nails."

Tran, whose husband works for the state of California, started out doing manicures at a friend's shop. She opened her own business six years ago, making enough for material comforts and to help send her five children to college.

Immigrants have long turned to becoming merchants or small-business owners because they were excluded from mainstream jobs, said Bill Hing, author of "Defining America Through Immigration Policy."

"They were discriminated against, and that's why they started looking for another way to make a living," said Hing, who teaches law and Asian American studies at the University of California, Davis. "They ended up becoming entrepreneurs."

Most recently, Russian immigrants have found success in child care, construction and janitorial work, Koreans in the dry-cleaning business, and Cambodians in doughnut shops, said Christine Nguyen, a deputy administrator at Asian Resources. The nonprofit group, which has three offices in Sacramento County, helps low-income families find jobs.

Small businesses are a perfect fit for immigrants with little access to capital, said Dennis Tootelian, a professor of marketing and director of the Center of Small Business at California State University, Sacramento.

"They don't have a lending history, so they tend to go into areas that are more labor intensive, and they are more willing to work hard," he said. "Most immigrants are not afraid of long and odd hours of work."

Because prices are so low at most of these types of salons, long hours and quick customer turnaround are imperative. Kathleen Mikulin, co-owner of Studio 28 hair salon in Sacramento, gets her nails done weekly at a nearby Vietnamese-owned shop.

She doesn't see a huge market in Sacramento for customers willing to spend a lot of money on a total spa manicure. Many full-service salons are changing their marketing to stress that they are one-stop shops for busy women on the go, offering aroma therapy, massages and high-end products.

In the capital region, the influx of Vietnamese immigrants coupled with the surge in population has generated enough demand for nail skills that John Thai Tran, no relation to Anna Tran, has opened two beauty schools in the city.

"I thought about my people and how they wanted to learn how to do nails and hair, and how we didn't have any place to learn because they didn't speak English," he said.

In 1990, he opened My Le beauty school on Stockton Boulevard, and this year started City Beauty College on Florin Road. At both places, courses are taught in Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese and Spanish. For $1,500, students enroll in a three-month course, take a state exam and emerge as licensed manicurists.

The national average weekly income for a nail technician is $496.77, while manicurists on the West Coast can make an average $628.15 a week.

"I tell my students it's a good future for them," he said. "American people like to do their nails, they like to dress up and look beautiful. That's why if they go to beauty school, they can go anywhere."

The surge in students persuaded Nhon Dang to stay on as an instructor at Tran's City Beauty College, rather than retire. The 61-year-old Dang never saw himself as a cosmetologist, let alone an instructor. In Saigon, he was a rare-antiquities dealer.

He finds artistry in the trade and tells his students to focus on technique and not money; otherwise the nails will not be beautiful, meaning the customer won't return.

Dang also warns them to steer clear of toxic chemicals, which some shop owners still use despite regulations banning them. Some customers have criticized nail salons for less-than-sanitary conditions. There have been 317 complaints this year for the state's 3,000 shops.

"My biggest joy is to see them succeed. I don't want any gifts," Dang said. "The best gift they can give me is that they have a job to do nails."

Chau Hoang, 19, who came to the United States in November, is one of a few male students at City Beauty College. He said his family encouraged him to do nails to save up money for college. He wasn't comfortable with the idea, but his parents told him to look at the bigger picture.

"It was kind of strange, but I have to endure it," he said. "If I had a chance and I spoke English, I would do office work, but this is the easiest way to find work when you first come (to the United States)."

Another student, Tham Pham, 23, has been in the United States for a few months. She's heard in Vietnam about how Vietnamese immigrants quickly found work in the U.S. nail business.

In Vietnam, Pham had been preparing to go to college and she knew if she came to the United States, she would end up doing manicures. But without English skills, it would be difficult for her to find another job that would get her out of the house, she said.

"When you first come here, you don't choose your job," she said. "It chooses you."

About the Writer
---------------------------

The Bee's Thuy-Doan Le can be reached at (916) 321-1040 or tdle@sacbee.com.

The Sacramento Bee

"I came here with empty hands, and I built the shop with the support of my husband. … I used my own hands and strength to do this."
Anna Tran
owner of Anna Nails in South Land Park Sacramento Bee/Renée C. Byer

Anna Tran, working on a client, has hung red, white and blue letters in her South Land Park nail shop that spell "I love USA." Sacramento Bee/Renée C. Byer

Tham Pham, who recently emigrated from Vietnam, practices nail design during a class at City Beauty College on Florin Road in Sacramento. Sacramento Bee/Renée C. Byer

Owner Anna Tran says she spends 60 hours a week scrubbing feet, buffing calluses and polishing acrylic nails in her shop. She hopes that her five children will use their education to get into another line of work. Sacramento Bee/Renée C. Byer

Posted by hiroco on January 19, 2005 at 03:10 AM | Permalink