Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, Dear Alleyway

The entire city of Gwangju suffered a major blow when The First Alleyway shuttered its doors at the end of August. While so much has been said on social media about how beloved the Alleyway was, we at the Gwangju News felt it was important to go a little more in depth. It is our hope that the following anecdotes, much like layers of pasta, will come together to make something that is more than the sum of its parts: In this case, a lasagna of stories that show how much the Alleyway was like the cheese that bound the community together. As well, we hope this final send off for the Alleyway will illustrate its generosity to the community, equaled only by the copious amounts of toppings heaped onto each and every Alleyway pizza. Excelsior! Ever Upward! — Ed.

A Chapter of Gwangju’s History
For many years, the Gwangju-Jeonnam Chapter of KOTESOL followed its monthly professional development workshops with dinner at The First Alleyway. I have so many wonderful memories of the Alleyway, but I suspect I’m not the only KOTESOLer for whom the most special memories are those chapter dinners.

These are the things I’ll remember: I’ll remember all our stomachs rumbling in anticipation as we trundled through the late afternoon to our feast. I’ll remember how arriving at the Alleyway always felt like stumbling into a tavern out of a fantasy story, all gentle glow and twinkle and jovial laughter. I’ll remember our reserved table waiting for us, and the excitement of introducing newcomers and visitors to the menu. Out-of-town workshop presenters often couldn’t quite believe the experience: how delicious the food was, how diverse the people were. They always went back to their own corner of Korea (or the world) pretty jealous, I think! I’ll remember the terrible acoustics (we can admit that now, right?), and eagerly leaning into the sparkliest strands of conversation. I’ll remember the TESOL talk easing into all-the-everything-else talk, and owner Tim dropping by our table to join in as the evening wore on, sometimes offering a courtesy drink to those of us still soaking up the embers. I’ll remember how often people would loudly and regretfully announce they needed to get home, and then linger for another hour or two, because nobody ever wanted to leave. Who would want to leave behind such a warm and welcoming hearth?

Tim Whitman may be most well known to you for The First Alleyway, but he’s also a pillar of English language teaching in the Gwangju community. He was an early lifetime member of the Gwangju-Jeonnam KOTESOL Chapter, and the Alleyway was a generous supporter of our conferences and events, taking out advertisements and offering prizes to attendees. We’re so grateful for the discount offered to KOTESOL members (we’ve got loads of other membership benefits, but we’re really going to miss that one), and we’re supremely grateful for the Alleyway’s catering of our annual year-end holiday event! Don’t let me start describing those turkey dinners, or I’ll take up the rest of this magazine . . .

The Gwangju-Jeonnam KOTESOL community, along with many communities in this region, will definitely mourn the loss of The First Alleyway. The memories we treasure, though, will continue to bring us joy. A big, hearty, grateful cheer for Tim and the Alleyway. Here’s to you!

— Bryan Hale (2021 Korea TESOL National President, living and teaching in Yeongam)

A Worldwide Thing
While I was a student at Chonnam National University, and after that as well, a lot of my foreign, non-Western friends – primarily Uzbeks and Chinese – had never had “American” food before. My boyfriend, who’s Uzbek, went there for the first time about three years ago. We regularly went to the Alleyway about once a month together, and that’s pretty much all we could afford for eating out, since he’s still a student.

Sharing our first experiences of Canadian and American food – our first hamburger (can you imagine!), first poutine, first lasagna, first fish and chips, first chicken wings! – was a great experience for me. My friends would comment that, the Alleyway seems “so typical” from what they’d heard or seen in movies and on TV, so I personally am quite grateful that the Alleyway and Tim were so welcoming and accommodating for non-Western friends of mine. It’s been a great intro for “American” life – a place where we could hang out with low pressure, and where we felt welcome. Tim would always come over and tell us about his life, and his manner and attitude always left us in awe, as my boyfriend also works in the restaurant industry. He occasionally brought his (Uzbek) friends there for their first “American” experience as well.

We’ll miss Tim’s stories, the garlic cheese “bread” (it’s actually pizza – nobody tell Tim that, lol), and the Caesar salad most of all.

— Madeline Miller (Now back in the U.S. after six years in Gwangju and looking forward to future international travels.)

The Non-Sports Bar, Sports Bar
The First Alleyway was kind enough to sponsor our (Adult Little League) baseball team called The Bombers. Through them, we had many great season-ending parties and festivities. They even hosted fantasy sports drafts and other Western sporting events. It wasn’t a sports bar or a do-everything kind of place, but it had a fun, home-away-from-home vibe that I enjoyed taking people to. It was Gwangju’s Cheers.

— Steve Alexander-Larkin (An American living in Suncheon.)

Finding Hope
I discovered The First Alleyway a few months after I moved to Korea in 2017. At that time, I was quite lost with less than basic knowledge of Korean and no means to manage alone in the new world I had stepped into.

The First Alleyway was the first Western-style restaurant that I found, and I was so happy that I almost cried. From the very moment I stepped in, I had the feeling of coming home into a familiar ambiance that was known to me – I felt like I was not in Korea anymore. At the time, it was the only place where I could listen and speak in English, and it was my lifesaver during my first year in Korea. The First Alleyway was also the only restaurant that had one of my favorite drinks, Grand Marnier, and the place where my daughter had her first lasagna, her favorite dish.

As time passed, I got to know more people in Gwangju and my life became more comfortable. The First Alleyway transformed into a place to meet friends, have nice conversation with Tim Whitman, or enjoy dinner with my family. And we did love the food.

It was the place where I persuaded Arlo and Danno of GFN to collaborate with Gwangju News and write some articles, and where I bothered all my acquaintances to do a GIC Talk. I am forever grateful for all the good moments I spent there, for all the memories I made, and also for the kindness that Tim always showed me. I will greatly miss The First Alleyway.

— Melline Galani (GIC Coordinator and Gwangju News Team Member in Gwangju)

Ode to The First Alleyway
South Korea only held me captive for one year. I was holed up on the southernmost outpost of the peninsula, Goheung-eup, so The First Alleyway served as the delightful bookend between weeks – a breakfasty bulwark between the insanity of teaching at an all-male middle school and the general degradation of lost weekends in Gwangju.

It was the last bastion of all good Sundays, where my sweaty, gaunt figure could slump in a chair and be brought back from the near-death of another night piled into a motel room with 10 or 12 other people and be resurrected into something almost human through a breakfast poutine and cocktails. The First Alleyway’s staff were always there to pick up the shattered remains of the JLP teachers at the end of long nights of karaoke-induced madness – they didn’t care how many fire extinguishers had been emptied onto dancefloors nor how many bones had been broken in the process. They were decorated battlefield medics in the never-ending war against our senses and sobriety, experts in triaging Bloody Marys in the cold light of day, and while we did our best to let them know it, they may never have truly understood how much their service meant to us in our various states of paralytic desecration.

The First Alleyway wasn’t just a breakfast joint, it was the breakfast joint of Gwangju and provided a joyous neutral ground for all the various factions of teachers that made up the JLP. It was a little bowl of home in a land far from any cheese curds, and it was always there to catch us and patch us up when the pressures of being so many thousands of miles from anything familiar got too much. Come for the breakfast, stay for the afternoon – many Sunday mornings were dragged out as we desperately sought to squeeze out every last drop of the weekend before we were thrust back into the thick of it in classrooms across Jeollanam-do. I can only pray for the future generations of EFL teachers who will have to make their way through Gwangju’s brutal grey mornings without such delights to end their weeks.

Now more than ever, the taste of home is something we all need – wherever in the world many of us ended up – and it’s sad to see COVID-19 claim another of the greats as The First Alleyway’s doors finally closed earlier this year. I’ve shared too many shaking and rollicking hangovers with far too many fine folks in that illustrious establishment, and the loss is a loss for all who ever slurped the last flecks of tobacco out of its cocktail glasses while trying to pretend that Sunday afternoons could last forever, but as The First Alleyway’s closure has demonstrated in crushing and certain terms – nothing gold can stay and no brunch is truly bottomless.

— Gerry Flynn (Freelance journalist based in Cambodia, but yearning for a return to the sandy beaches of Busan.)

Compiled by William Urbanski.
Photographs courtesy of Isaiah Winters and Joe Wabe.