A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight on APEX Express, guest host Ravi Grover explores the team behind Haibayo, a community base rooted on Argyle Street in Chicago. Listen in! Haibayo Interview Transcript Ravi: [00:00:44] Welcome to Apex Express. Today, we’re exploring the vibrant and deeply rooted cultural corridor of Argyle Street, nestled in Chicago’s north side Uptown neighborhood. Known as a historic hub for Vietnamese and Southeast Asian communities, Argyle has long been a place of family, food, resilience, and reinvention. Today, we’re joined by Jennifer Nuky Pham and Hac, the duo behind Haibayo. This episode is especially meaningful to me because I’m also a resident of Uptown, the neighborhood that Argyle calls home. Chicago has 77 neighborhoods, and when we first moved to Chicago, I lived in Edgewater, which was right on the border of Uptown. What initially drew us to this area was the affordability, but what truly made it feel like home was its incredible diversity. We had access to American grocery stores alongside Ethiopian, Indian, Pakistani, Mexican, Colombian, Vietnamese, and Chinese markets, and that cultural richness extended to the residents who made up the area. Being next to Lake Michigan, with strong public transit connections to the rest of the city, there was also an added bonus. I first met Jennifer Pham several years ago at a group puja, a religious ritual ceremony performed in Hinduism and Buddhism. We realized we were neighbors living fairly close to each other, and not long after, she invited me to one of Haibayo’s early gatherings. Haibayo events were always filled with creative and interesting people from all walks of life. There was always great food, great music, and a sense of belonging that was reflective of the Uptown neighborhood itself. What struck me most was how Haibayo brought together people from different backgrounds and different neighborhoods, and it built something grounded, dynamic, and deeply community-centered. What started out as a series of social events designed to draw people to Argyle and support local businesses has grown into something much more expansive. Today, Haibayo is a community-rooted force, offering youth arts programming, wellness and healing workshops, music events, vendor markets, and marathons that raise funds for neighborhood causes. In this episode of Apex Express, we’ll talk about how Haibayo came to be, how it’s working to protect and reimagine Argyle’s legacy, and why preserving cultural corridors like this one matters now more than ever. Let’s dive into it. Ravi: [00:03:29] Hac and Nuky, what’s up? Thanks for joining us. Why don’t we start off with introductions and maybe talk about how your family made their journey from Vietnam to the city of Chicago? Hac: [00:03:35] Hi, I’m Hac. I’m one of the co-founders of Haibayo. So yeah, my family came here after the Vietnam War, both my parents. So my father actually is the one that came to Vietnam, from Vietnam to Chicago in 1975. He was actually on one of those historic photos of the last day of Saigon and the South Vietnamese government, those helicopter photos. He was on one of those helicopters that left the embassy. So he came after fleeing in 1975 on the 30th of April. Hac: [00:04:10] He went to Wake Island. And my mom separately, her family also went to Wake Island. It was like a refugee camp. So yeah, my parents, they both left on the last day of April 30th, 1975, which is actually this year going to be the 50th year anniversary of the fall of Saigon. So both of my parents separately left Saigon on that day, and they arrived in Wake Island, which was a US island in the Pacific, and they set up refugee camps over there. My dad actually was an English teacher, like an ESL, teaching other refugees English in the camp. And my mom was his assistant. So they met each other for the first time in the refugee camp after the fall of Saigon. And then my father, he was the only one in his entire family that actually left Vietnam. Hac: [00:04:55] So he was sponsored, I think after Wake Island, a lot of the folks, they went to Fort Chaffee, which was another refugee base for a lot of Vietnamese refugees in Arkansas. From there, my father was sponsored by Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois. So he came here. After graduating, he actually moved to Argyle Street. And then my mom’s side of the family actually was sponsored by a Lutheran church, I believe, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But it was in like 1977. Yeah, I think it was 77. There was a huge snowstorm, historic snowstorm in Chicago that year. My dad was actually at a friend’s house at Sheridan and Argyle Street. And my mom and her friends from UW Milwaukee came down. They were going to intend to go to Chinatown, but because of the snow, they stopped by this person’s house. Back then, there was not a lot of Vietnamese businesses or anything. So people were selling things out of their house, but they reconnected on Argyle Street in 77. So that’s kind of like the history and the background of my parents to Argyle. Ravi: [00:06:14] So what was it about that specific area that drew Vietnamese people to Argyle? Hac: [00:06:18] Yeah, so the history of Argyle Street, actually, it was intended to be like a Chinatown north. So it was like an extents of the Chinese community here. I think it was like the Tong Wars. I don’t know if you’re familiar. Ravi: [00:06:27] Yeah, clans. Hac: [00:06:28] Yeah. So there was like, you know, the Hip Sing organization versus the Ong Leong, which are two different Tongs that have beef historically. But basically, Hip Sing was not allowed into Chinatown where it is now. So they had to find another home. So that organization actually identified like Argyle Street to make like a Chinatown north in Chicago in like probably the mid to late 60s. So there was like primarily Chinese businesses at the time. But like with the influx of, you know, refugees from Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, a lot of them just migrated to Argyle. I don’t know exactly why. But, you know, I think like Uptown has historically been kind of a port of entry for many people from around the world. And there was like a lot of social service organizations that existed then. Nuky: [00:07:14] My name is Jennifer Nuky Pham. My parents, they both ended up at Fort Chaffee, the refugee camp that Hac mentioned in Arkansas. They met at the refugee camp. But prior to then, they both fled Vietnam in April 30th, 1975 as well. They both split up from their families. So half of the family on my mom’s side left to, you know, to try to get to the States. And same thing with my dad. And my dad was actually, he had a room at the refugee camp. My mom was looking for one of her friends. And that friend wasn’t at home. And my dad was there. So he was, you know, just trying to, you know, have conversation with her. And then, you know, a love story happened. And then they eventually stayed in touch. And they found out there was some opportunity to be able to get sponsored to go to school at the University of Iowa. After about a year or so, my dad started at the University of Iowa. My mom ended up following later. But during this time, my grandmother and my cousin was in Chicago. And so my dad was going back and forth from Chicago to the University of Iowa. Nuky: [00:08:16] They eventually moved to Uptown area. My dad started working in a pharmacy right by Truman College. He noticed that there were many Vietnamese people in the area that needed his help translating prescriptions. And eventually he opened up a pharmacy on Argyle Street. My mom chose the location. She thought Argyle Street, right smack in the center of where the heart of Argyle is now, which is on Argyle and Winthrop. She chose that location because she thought it would be, you know, central for Vietnamese folks. Because she noticed there were many folks that lived in the area. And there were some Thai grocery stores close by, which is, I would say, closest to Vietnamese ingredients. Nuky: [00:08:56] And eventually my dad opened up the first Vietnamese business on the street. It wasn’t the first Asian. He was the first Vietnamese business. Hac: [00:09:00] But also interestingly, like kind of our family histories, there’s kind of some intersection as well. Her mother and my father actually were classmates in Vietnam. They went to college together. So they had known each other like during the war, right? Like they were like students. So like that’s where kind of there’s an intersection of like how our families kind of have known each other even before we were born. Nuky: [00:09:20] We have a photo of them together too, back in Vietnam, which is interesting. Hac: [00:09:25] Oh, no, that one? No, that one was here. Nuky: [00:09:25] Oh, that one was here? Hac: [00:09:25] It was like the graduates from Da Lat University. Nuky: [00:09:25] Oh, the graduates. Okay. Nuky: [00:09:29] She looked, they looked so young. Yeah. Ravi: [00:09:34] Thanks for sharing a piece of your family’s history. Why don’t we segue from the parents and talk a little bit more about your generation? How was your relationship with Argyle as you were growing up? Nuky: [00:09:44] Well, Argyle was home for me. I didn’t know anything outside of Argyle at the time. Growing up, I grew up on Winona on Broadway, which is just a few blocks from, you know, like the center of Argyle. And I would go to the pharmacy every day with my parents and it felt like Little Vietnam back then. And, you know, you walk outside, everyone’s speaking Vietnamese and Cambodian and Khmer, and you’d hear loud music playing. There were always people just hanging out by their cars, blasting their music. In my parents
