The Boss is a bar next to Jumbo Seafood Restaurant & Lounge, which in turn is next to a business that sells jewelry and furniture, all of which are contained in a building, Rainier Mall, that’s painted the color of white flesh and has near its entrance impressive statues of roaring lions and ancient and curvy Greek women dancing in a way that would excite and wet the dreams of a 19th-century German philosopher. If, as I have written in another column, the bar at Maneki is like the set in a movie by the Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu (warm, familiar, practical), the Boss is like the set in a movie by the Hong Kong director John Woo. And by this, I do not mean the Woo of the ’90s (his Hollywood period), but the Woo of the ’80s, when the handsome Chinese actor Chow Yun-Fat was his leading man.
The Boss is small, is dark, and has a bar in its east section and a stage for karaoke in its west. Though most of its patrons are Vietnamese, one who, like me, has consumed a large amount Hong Kong crime thrillers can’t help but feel that, upon entering the Boss, it would be perfectly normal to find the dangerous but ultimately honorable assassin played by Chow Yun-Fat in the film The Killer sitting at the bar, downing shots of whiskey. One could even picture the assassin leaving the Boss in slow motion—overcoat swaying with each slow step, and one hand smoothly placing a black pistol into the pot of a plastic plant.
When I visited the Boss late one night, I had a glass of wine (Pine & Post) that cost $8, a well vodka and tonic that cost $9 (at least it was strong), and a small plate of giant shrimp that cost $9. Wineglasses hung from the rack over my head like bats. A man on the stage sang a very sentimental Vietnamese song, the flowers in front of me had folded dollar notes planted in their white petals, and the lady bartenders were very sweet and eager to please me, to make me feel like I was the boss, the only big boss in the whole of the world. 
