Cafe Patrons Brush Off Memories for Final Bash

John Leech served his cappuccino on the sidewalk Tuesday, not bothering to charge his artist-patrons as he moved his collections of brightly colored flatware and herb teas out of the Onyx Cafe.

This morning, the people who run the movie theater next door will take possession of the cafe, intending to turn it into a ticket booth.

The closure follows a bitter eviction battle that ended in defeat for the cafe last month, but when the theater managers arrive this morning they will be greeted by a gift of sorts from Leech and his patrons.

On two walls of the tiny Silver Lake hangout, 13 artists, led by the prominent painter known merely as Gronk, have created an eclectic mural--designed as both a tribute to their favorite gathering place and a dare to the landlord, Fred Hicks, to destroy it.

The mural captures their memories of the storefront espresso bar that has attracted a loyal late-night clientele of Los Angeles artists, writers and hangers-on since it opened in 1982. One section of the mural portrays slices of apple pie; another shows steaming coffee cups, and several are based on the black and white pattern of the tile floor.

Created over two weeks, the mural was completed at an appropriately kooky farewell party over the weekend.

“It’s fun working on a surface knowing that it’s going to get the ball,” explained Gronk, who wore a bone for a bow tie at the final bash, which began Saturday night and carried into Sunday morning. “Things that are temporal, like love, like the Onyx, like everything else, have to be given up. The idea is to not possess.”

Perched precariously on a turquoise linoleum table amid a throng of people passing around bottles of champagne, Desiree Buckman rewound the film on a projector mounted on the wall to show her three-minute movie, “Onyx,” for perhaps the 20th time.

As the film’s favorite image--of pointed shoes moving backward across the tile floor--flickered on the far wall, a man in his 20s juggled four bean bags while a woman, clad head-to-toe in black, played her accordion and sang paeans to the coffeehouse.

“I did it as sort of a memento to the end,” Buckman said of her film. “Unfortunately this whole scene is going to be a commitment to memory. What a drag.”

On the sidewalk in front of the Sunset Drive cafe, a guitar player with a pompadour was surrounded by a group loudly harmonizing to songs such as “She’s My Baby” while Leech moved through the crowds with plates of sushi, pastries, stuffed grape leaves and pate.

“It’s the end of an era, man. The end of an era,” said Vinzula Kara, a lanky artist who wears his hair in dreadlocks and contributed one corner of the mural. “I mean, you look around you and you almost can’t believe this is happening.”

The place was named for the Onyx Club, a famous New York jazz club of the 1930s. The walls featuring art that changed every eight weeks or so, and the patrons including well-known Los Angeles painters such as Peter Shire, Gronk, Gary Panter and Cam Slocum, the Onyx was the kind of place where books were written and lots of black was worn.

Leech received his first eviction notice last August. Hicks, who holds the master lease for the property, wanted to expand the Vista Theatre next door to three screens and needed the space for the new ticket booth.

Last fall, Leech and his patrons launched a fight to save the coffeehouse. More than 3,000 people signed a petition protesting the eviction, two Los Angeles city councilmen added their support and two demonstrations were staged in front of the cafe.

But when the case went to court, it took a jury only a few hours to decide in Hicks’ favor.

Leech said he hopes to find a new spot for his cafe someday, but for now he’s packing up his cinnamon and syrups and heading for his cabin in Northern California and a friend’s flat in Amsterdam.

“It’s like a wake,” the cafe owner said during the party he threw at his own expense. “These people are real coffeehouse types. They haven’t deserted me. Besides, you’ve got to have some fun for that last time.”

The artists finishing the mural agreed, not the least bit concerned that their work might soon be destroyed.

“That’s what it’s all about, after all,” said Lucas Reiner, who contributed a large section of the work. “It’s just a tip of the hat to this particular place where I’ve come and had coffee and met people.”