Kim Chow

Better known as Queen Mother, Kim has a soft, slow way of speaking. She is the oldest of six siblings born in Kansas City, MO. Her grandmother watched over her because Kim’s mother hadn’t been ready to have children, and took her anger out on the children, especially Kim. She remembers being seven years old, happily playing in the bathtub with her younger brother, when their mother came in with a cast iron pot and poured scalding hot water on them.

“What mother doesn’t want their child?” Kim said, while leaning against a doorstep near midnight in Hillcrest. “In the layers of violence, that’s the lowest of the low.”

Things only got worse for Kim as it became clear her sexuality was different from other boys. At 15 her parents disowned her and she was sent to live with an uncle in Granada Hills, CA. The uncle was a father of eight girls and everyone thought it would be better for Kim to grow up with them. Her grandmother lived in California as well, and she was Kim’s favorite. “She had bloody red hair,” Kim remembers. “And she would not let anyone be abusive. She was one of those people who believed if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

That didn’t mean she wasn’t attentive to family dynamics. Kim said her grandmother would throw big gatherings, then watch how everyone acted and treated each other. “She would do whatever she needed to do to find out what she needed to know,” Kim said. She had married a Chinese man who was very spiritual, but whom Kim never got to meet because he died before she was born. Her grandmother kept a picture of him hung on a shelf in her walk-in closet at the brick house she owned in Granada Hills. Kim feels he inhabits her soul in some way. She credits her own keen instinct to a connection to her grandfather.

In order to make her way on the streets when her family life became unbearable, she would hustle on the street, working as a prostitute, to feed herself. “It paid many good bills,” she said. “But it’s good and bad. I haven’t done that for years. It’s nasty.” When she started “getting into street life,” it was 1979, and downtown San Diego’s clubs were full of sailors and dancing at the strip clubs. She said everyone counted on each other and it wasn’t nearly as predatory as it is now. Her first best friend was a costume designer from Europe, which suited Kim’s penchant for high fashion just fine. He flew her to see the Las Vegas Grand Prix and other car races.

There are a few things in her past she is not particularly proud of. In 1983, near Sixth Street downtown, she was walking with her signature Calvin Klein suit and thigh high Gucci boots with a pyramid on the toe. Someone came up behind her and pulled her down to the sidewalk and started beating her. “He was beating me and beating me. Then he was choking me. I couldn’t breathe and thought I was done. Then I remembered I had a buck knife.” She lashed out at the attacker, who died of his wounds. Kim credits her lawyer for making the self-defense argument that kept her from spending the rest of her life in jail.

“Life on the streets is nothing to play with,” she added. In fact, she is most proud of the time she convinced two sisters that were being abused by the drug spice, they needed to go back home. “Their eyes were black, lips busted, they were a mess from spice,” Kim said. The girls parents were in the process of getting a divorce, and the sisters were afraid they would be separated; each one to a different parent, so they ran away together. One day the girls came to Kim and told her, “Queen Mother, we are going home now.” To this day, Kim said, the family comes to visit her and brings her roses. “That’s what I’m here for,” sh said emphatically.

She learned everything she knows from the people on the street. But she is aware no one can be trusted. She stopped buying phones because they always get stolen. She might leave her belongings in someone’s care, but when she returns, everything is gone. Meanwhile, there’s no privacy on the street. There’s no unity, she said, “Loyalty is gone. You don’t trust anyone. It’s a callous way of living, if you want to love someone.”

Back in the day, in the mid 1980s to the 2000s, people respected the rules of the street. Now she tries to help the younger generation see the dangers in front of them. “Some just don’t make it,” she said. “I was lucky.” But as she gets older, she feels a different kind of vulnerability. “I worry a lot because I take heart medicine, and it knocks me out. I can’t always keep one eye open when I am resting.” She said two months ago she woke up in Old Town naked, lying across the train tracks. “Someone had slipped me a mickey. It’s dangerous on the streets.”

By way of example, she talked about how she would expect the community of Hillcrest to be at least accommodating of her, if not outright supportive. Unfortunately there’s a veneer that hides some real dirt, she said. “Most are followers, no leaders.” The attitudes of “normies” are reflected in the way people treat her as they walk by. “Here, people draw up your reputation for you. And when they see you they think they know you. But that’s not me. They refuse to see anything nice. I have to tune that out or I lose my fucking brain.

“It’s hard because if you want to be anybody or prove yourself, you have to go through hell and back and you still won’t be done. I came up here because I thought it was safe. I got entwined in the drug scene and now I’m stuck….. I’m glad you came. I wanted something left behind (my story) in case I die. Because I deserve that.