Red Dragon
Pony up some change, and call your own tunes. Here's what you'll get at Lyndale Avenue's perenially popular Asian eatery and bar.
More Jukeboxing
Where they haven’t been replaced by charmless, trend-crunching tune-bots, jukeboxes say a lot about a place—nay, enhance the place. In Jukeboxing, Decider spends some quarters and punches some buttons at Twin Cities bars and venues. This edition takes a look at the jukebox at the venerable Lyndale Avenue Chinese restaurant and late-night hangout Red Dragon.
The Box: Welcome to the future, Dragon-aholics. Or at least it seems like the future compared to the Red Dragon’s wonderfully old-school Chinese-restaurant kitsch. The Dragon rocks a digital juke—you know, one of those newfangled touch-screens that make pub purists roll their eyes. Soused song choosers will feel that scrolling through the music menu is an iPod-esque experience, and Confucius says that neglected songs magically disappear from the machine and are replaced by jams that TouchTunes headquarters deem more appropriate based on what other songs are being played. (Call it Big Brother meets Big Beats in Chinatown.)
Price: Surprise, surprise—the future features inflated prices. One play costs 50 cents, five plays cost two dollars, and five bucks buys 13 songs. But it’s not like you could get much of anything at the Dragon for that kind of scratch; their hallmark drink, the Wondrous Punch, costs something north of ten wontons. Good news is that the Wondrous is about equivalent to a non-alcoholic’s entire evening of drinking, all held in one glorious goblet.
Drinkin’ Songs: This juke caters to an array of drinky moods. Funky-but-melancholic types can sip to Tom Waits’ “New Coat Of Paint,” while those who prefer giggles inspired by the garish side of the '80s can swerve heads and rear ends to a host of Teena Marie oddities. And with an evening winding down, there’s no better nightcap than Shirley Murdock’s wayward warbling.
Nerd Jams: Hall & Oates, anyone? “Maneater” is enough of a pop classic to escape condescending glances from those planted at the Dragon’s Pagoda-inspired bar, but select one of the many other H&O offerings, say, “Private Eyes” or “Adult Education,” and you might as well flash everyone your laminated HONOA (Hugely Obvious Nerds Of America) card.
Mixes: None are apparent. The Dragon’s juke is album-centric. Apparently forward-thinking music technology objects to the co-mingling of songs with differing authors. Confucius speaks again: Jukeboxes of the future are wrought with musical segregation.
Locals: Uh, no, this is not that kind of machine. The only locals on display in this box are those who have flirted with the Top 40 or have gone on to become music megastars. The TouchTunes features a plethora of Prince mainstays, and onetime Twin Citian John Wozniak, of Marcy Playground fame, will find his “Sex and Candy” resonating within the metallic-wallpapered ramparts of our fair Dragon.
For Bar Time: Laidback barkeep Pat Chan seems proud of the diversity of music streaming from the Dragon’s jukebox: “People play everything from Patsy Cline to Miles Davis to Led Zeppelin. Well, I’m the one who plays a lot of Zeppelin.”
