In our younger days, Nguyen Qui Duc often talked about one day establishing a writer-artist retreat in Ha Long Bay, an aquamarine sea in northern Vietnam dotted with majestic clusters of limestone islets where, according to myths and drunken poets, dragons were sent down from the Heavens to help Vietnam repel invaders; thus the name Ha Long, which means “Descending Dragon” in Vietnamese.  Duc came close with Tadioto, “a salon and exhibition space that became a Hanoi landmark,” as Seth Mydans wrote in Duc’s obit in the New York Times, “where both Vietnamese and foreigners gathered for music, poetry and long nights of drinks and sushi…”

Duc’s leaving was not unexpected, yet still seemed so sudden. I last saw him in March in the Bay Area. We had dinner with his uncle, his sister and her husband, along with other members of his family. The meal was brief; he talked about how his businesses were growing and we agreed to meet up soon in Vietnam.

Duc was one of my oldest friends. We met in the late 1980s when I was starting out as a newspaper writer and Duc was in public radio. He was only a couple of years older, but much more worldly and world wearied. By the time we met, he had already traveled to many parts of the world, worked for the BBC in London, and helped boat people in a refugee camp in Indonesia. The war had shattered his family. His father, a high-ranking South Vietnamese official, was imprisoned by the communist for more than a decade. His mom was fired from her job as a school principal after Saigon fell. To survive, she resorted to selling noodle soup in the street, the same bun bo Hue soup that Duc later introduced to Anthony Bourdain. Duc had a gift for language. He came to the United States at a relatively late age of 17, yet he learned to speak flawless English with a British accent, as though his teacher was Henry Higgins.

Duc was living on Taylor Street in San Francisco, in a two-bedroom apartment with exposed red brick on one wall and a collection of original paintings and photographs on the other walls. The building, on the edge of Nob Hill and the Tenderloin, had a long and wide side entrance where we could park several of our cars for the night and walked all over the city. Duc’s walk-up soon became a gathering spot for our coterie of friends during those formative years. We stayed there so much that some of us chipped in for rent each month. We were refugees relatively new to America, still learning to decipher its cultural algorithm. We were too young to have been directly involved with the war, but we nevertheless inherited our parents’ pain and guilt for the loss of South Vietnam. We came saddled with pre-assembled sadness, a post-war melancholy for which there was no easy catharsis. We knew we were fortunate to be able to go to school in the United States, to have professional careers, to possess a passport to the world. Staying behind in communist Vietnam would have prevented us from all those opportunities, but in return, our identity became forever bifurcated in the new land, never to be whole again.

Duc’s apartment was centrally located, within walking distance to North Beach and Chinatown, to downtown and Nob Hill. Sometimes, we would go up to Top of the Mark to marvel at the city lights below. Other times, we would imbibe next to old men rolling liar’s dice at Li Po in Chinatown. We ate osso buco at Enrico’s, played Puccini on the jukebox at Tosca’s, loitered for hours inside the City Lights Bookstore, drank at Vesuvio by Kerouac Alley while at the Condor nearby, Carol Doda flashed her neon areolae above Broadway.

The city was our magic carpet. One night we would dine on Chinese food at a hole-in-the-wall in the Tenderloin. Another night we would lounge on the veranda of Le Colonial while whining about the evils of French occupation without a hint of irony. After dinner, we would shoot pool at the Tunnel Top or the Banana Club, where cops downed shots next to karaoke-singing gangbangers next to Academy of Arts coeds. And after last call, we would struggle over to this all-night spot off Columbus for noodle soup. A waitress there had such a filthy mouth that she made us blushed and a little turned on.

It was before social media, so we had time to roam the streets and traverse the alleys, enchanted by the city, spellbound by its nocturnal air dripping with mystery and possibilities. We wrote poetry and short stories; some of us painted, composed songs and created computer art. We published the first Vietnamese literary anthology. We translated the works of Vietnamese writers from earlier generations. We tried to make sense of what it was like to be anchorless, to be first-generation Vietnamese-Americans. We started an arts group called Ink & Blood, which counted among the members Duc, writer Andrew Lam, artist-poet Hai Dai Nguyen, DVAN founder Isabelle Thuy Pelaud… Another founder was Viet Thanh Nguyen, who later received a Pulitzer for “The Sympathizer.” Those were our most creative years – and they were a blast.

Duc had an innate talent for making art out of the ordinary, for distilling beauty from the quotidian. I learned from him this simple premise: If you’re in a position to help someone, then do. Duc helped countless aspiring writers, journalists and artists over the years., mentoring them, introducing them to the right connection. His legacy will live on through them.

We later went our separate ways. Hai Dai moved to Bali, Duc to Hanoi... I remember well the last time with Duc in Vietnam. He hosted a dinner party for my wife and me, then we hung out at his bar, sipping whiskey and reminiscing until the wee hours. The next morning, we drove out to Tam Dao, to the beautiful mountain getaway that he had designed and built with a pool that overlooked a verdant, mist-shrouded valley. We both thought that there would be more chances for laughter and commiserating in the future.

In the darker moments of those San Francisco days, we could hear the approaching din of time’s winged chariot, we knew the eventual cost of our profligacy, but we couldn’t resist the allure of living for the moment, of diving into the wind with the volume cranked up to 11. And sure, we have regrets and disappointments, but life is inherently an unfinished business. I don’t think I will ever visit the city without thinking of Duc, of a yesterday when we were younger and more brilliant, of that brief spark in time when we were Ascending Dragons…