As the lights dim, center stage turns to the morphing blue, green, yellow, and red lights glowing through the shoji walls, casting a funky ambiance in the room. Tourists and locals are excited and eager as they begin to arrive at the front door; many of them are visiting for the first time to confirm if its website’s description of the restaurant as the “ultimate San Francisco experience” are accurate. Dance tunes give this restaurant a hip atmosphere for customers coming to enjoy the three-star cal-asian cuisines prepared by Executive Chef Matthew Metcalf.

But scrumptious food isn’t the only draw to this restaurant-lounge and dance club resting on the corner of Ninth and Howard Streets. The music dissapates and a husky voice comes out loud and clear through the microphone, “Are you all ready for the ladies of Asia SF?” The roaring laughter and conversations dies down immediately, and patrons await the start of the show.

After the enthusiastic screams and cheers, the music turns back up, and the spotlight shifts to three beautiful ladies with long flowing hair dancing provocatively to the tune, captivating the audience with their moves and alluring smiles.

“It’s more or less like a Broadway-theatre type show,” says Atsuo “JR” Jinzenji, the thirty-seven-year-old floor/nightclub manager of six years. Sitting back, he watches as the ladies of Asia SF, most slender and delicately built, slowly get the restaurant prepared for the evening.

Jinzenji, sporting waist-length corn rows and wearing a crisp white shirt, brown fuzzy vest, and a skinny black tie, explains how this restaurant isn’t just entertainment—it also spreads knowledge about San Francisco’s transgender/transsexual community to the public.

“The performers are transgendered, they are gender illusionists,” says Jinzenji. “They are born as male by mistake, but live their lives as females.” Not all the performers are transgendered though—some of the girls are transsexuals.

Running her slender fingers through her red-tinted black hair, twenty-four-year-old Nya Reyes (which is her stage name), has been a cocktail waitress and a performer at the restaurant for five years. “People are very shocked, they hear what it is, a tranny show and they expect to see an overweight, hairy man with a pink wig and they come and see girls that are actually passable, living normally as women,” says Reyes, in her soft raspy voice.

Wearing a black cardigan over a grey rhinestone-studded top, black leggings and boots, Reyes explains that the restaurant and the performances it conducts benefits the community just by introducing transsexuals to its patrons in person. “I didn’t even know what a transsexual was until I was eighteen or nineteen years old and never met another transsexual until I came [to Asia SF] to watch the show.”

Jinzenji says ninety percent of the customers who come to watch the show are heterosexual. While providing a show during dinner is entertaining, the performers also provide the San Francisco community and other visitors new ways to view and celebrate life and sexuality. “We kill the stereotypes. Even homophobic people would realize and see a different aspect of who we are,” Jinzenji says.