Wow, that is a very interesting story. Thanks for posting, Occhi!
The fact that so many nail salons are run by Vietnamese was a mystery that I never thought I would live to see solved.

That is really fascinating. I love stories like this, when something widespread in the culture can be traced back to a specific time and place. (Also, I just watched The Birds over the weekend, so it was funny coming to MeCha and seeing Tippi Hedren's name right there.)

What a fascinating and bizarre factoid.

Wow. Just one little thing; teaching a handful of woman how to do nails. It's amazing to me how that little kindness has made such an enormous difference in so many lives.

By 1990, they had virtually eliminated the established nail industry in the US. Black, white, hispanic, didn't matter, everybody's nail business folded. No one saw this coming. The industry has only really started studying what actually happened and how it succeeded so spectacularly.

The root problem was the old business model of renting stations in existing salons and using finger- and toe-time to upsell the shops' other services. The vietnamese rented cheap storefronts in high traffic areas and brought in dremels and plastics that cut 40 minutes off the hour of chair time that was otherwise required to sculpt acrylic. Complex nail art became stick-on decals. By then, too, polish was so forgiving that it covered the crappiest work with a smooth finish that looked like it was applied by a regional champion.

That was the first time I damn near had to declare bankruptcy, and our financial picture never really improved from there. This was also when my heart became noticeably problematic. Losing that shop was definitely the reason our marriage tanked.

So, yeah, thanks a whole fucking lot, Tippi.

What I find interesting on a tangential note is that while the Canadian article writer refers to "Italians" and "Koreans" when giving examples of other immigrant people who flocked to a specific industry, he writes "Filipinas" to speak specifically about Filipino women in health care and child care.

However, I'm not interested enough to try and dig up statistics on Filipino men in health care. The child care thing... well, considering that many middle class families in the Philippines employ nannies (called "yayas") to take care of the kids (and the housework) in a large family, I totally understand it.

Ardiril - you owned a nail shop/salon/some beauty business? That explains how you knew why my local salons were closed on Mondays... Hm.

My nails were ruined by a Vietnamese nail bar (yes, they're all over England too). A so-called 'technician' once drilled down to the nail bed with the dremel and the pain was excruciating. I've never gone back to one of those drill places, but my nails, years on, have not yet recovered.

A woman at work has the most fantastic nails and I asked her what she did to keep them so good. Her answer was "horses". She said that the hoof ointment she rubs into her horses' hooves have conditioned her nails over the years. She's given me a little pot of it to see if it'll help mine, which are soft and thin. It smells horrible, like strong liquorice, but I'm happy to give it a try. the smell goes once it's rubbed in.

Dairy farmers use a similar product for cows hooves. My grandmother used it on her nails, and my aunt still does.

Note: I just realized, the irony that her name is 'Tippi'.

Senyar, I found that taking 10mg of biotin a day has totally fixed my nails after a careless nail tech destroyed them. They went from breaking off to being superstrong in just a few months. And my hair seems to be growing faster, too.