SOCIAL CLIMES : An Evening in Iguanaland

The Iguana Cafe isn’t your average coffeehouse. This carnival of all things funky was a Valley mecca for music, poetry and art long before the 1992 creation of the North Hollywood Arts District (NoHo) along the old downtown strip, which, ironically, left the Iguana just outside its borders.

At the counter, there are cassettes and CDs--many of them very independently produced--of the cafe’s regular performers, as well as poetry chapbooks, zines, and crafts and T-shirts by local artists.

There are walls of used books, incense, Tarot cards, Andean rain sticks, “Iguana Lisa” handbags and an array of snacks, sodas and cookies. Oddly enough, the only thing that’s not for sale at this coffeehouse is the coffee. It’s free. Regular or decaf. Help yourself.

“That’s because this place is about the people performing,” says Tom Ianiello, owner of the New Age/hippie/countercultural haven, used bookstore and performance venue in one. “I’m not interested in having people on stage playing music or reading and having to shout over the cappuccino maker.”

Ianiello opened Iguana--which he also calls “The People’s Democratic Republic of Iguanaland”--because, he says, “I was otherwise unemployable.”

The place lives up to its more fanciful moniker not only by its groovy motifs and its ultra-liberal policy of accepting the community’s work on consignment, but, more important, by keeping the cover charge down to proletarian levels and keeping the place open to all ages from teens to seniors. Since it first opened just off the beaten path along Lankershim Boulevard in 1989, the Iguana has consistently brought in such renowned L.A. musical figures as Exene Cervenka, John Doe and Dave Alvin, as well as opening its stage to a host of undiscovered talents.

Although the acts are all acoustic, no performer has to shout. When the lights go down, the patrons, among them a hard core of neighborhood regulars who treat this as their living room away from home, arrange their chairs in semi-circles around the tables facing the stage and listen quietly.

“This is just an excellent place to both perform and hang out,” says 27-year-old Matthew Niblock, a singer-songwriter of “unclassifiable alternative music” whose allegiance to the Iguana is so strong he had his wedding reception here. “People are really into the music. I love this place.”

The types of genres here span the musical gamut--R&B;, folk, salsa, bossa nova and experimental, plus poetry and other varieties of the spoken word. One thing you won’t ever hear at Iguana, however, are cover tunes.

“We’re all original,” Ianiello says. “That’s our one rule.”

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Where: Iguana Cafe, 10943 Camarillo St., North Hollywood; (818) 763-7735.

When: Sunday, noon to 1 a.m.; Tuesday through Thursday, 3 p.m. to 1 a.m.; Friday, 3 p.m. to 4 a.m.; Saturday, noon to 4 a.m.

Cost: Cover is $3 to $5 (for shows only). Sunday open mike is free. Sodas and juices are $1; cookies, 80 cents. Coffee is free.