A Peaceful Junction on Sunset Boulevard

The Tsunami Coffeehouse is a virtual shrine to the Supremes. Dozens of album covers and photographs of the 1960s Motown trio adorn one towering wall of the cavernous room. But it’s more than just a way for fan Michael McKinley to pay homage to his favorite group. It’s also a reminder for the young people in the Youth at Risk program, who work and study at the establishment after school.

“Here are these three young black women from the ghetto who changed history in the 1960s,” says McKinley.

The humble beginnings of the Supremes are not that far removed from the situations of many of the kids in the Los Angeles area known as Sunset Junction, the juncture of Echo Park, Silver Lake and Los Feliz named for the onetime Red Car stop at Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards. The message for the kids, says McKinley, is “don’t give up.”

For a personalized spin on that mantra, Mary Wilson, an original member of the trio, has headlined the Sunset Junction Street Fair for the last three years. She will appear again Sunday night, helping to close out the annual two-day event this weekend.

“She’s wonderful,” McKinley coos. “She could do the Greek, but she chooses to keep coming back here--for the kids.”

The street fair began 20 years ago as a way to bring the community together.

“This is the bohemia of L.A. because of its diversity,” McKinley says. The neighborhood was a jumble of lower-income Latino families, affluent whites, middle-income gays and gangs, according to Sharon Delugach, spokeswoman for Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, whose district includes the Sunset Junction area.

An Inclusive Block Party

The event came about because of tension in the neighborhood, especially between gays and gang members. McKinley and some friends decided to promote a sense of community among the various groups that share the hilly, historic district along Sunset Boulevard, northwest of downtown. They came up with the idea of a block party. Determined not to leave out any faction, McKinley said they approached El Centro del Pueblo, a gang intervention program in Echo Park, to call a truce among the gangs.

“Instead of pushing them out, we included them because we wanted the festival to be for everyone,” McKinley says. “We made them street security.”

The first Sunset Junction Street Fair came off without conflict. And the little block party expanded into an annual neighborhood celebration with carnival rides, entertainment, craft booths and a delectable array of ethnic foods. (Besides Wilson, the entertainment this year includes Darlene Love and Nona Hendryx on Saturday night.)

But there were also benefits that McKinley had not foreseen. The street fair actually raised money through vendor fees and donations.

The cash was put back into the community through temporary jobs for the local youths. The first year, the kids painted half a dozen murals around the neighborhood.

Initially, McKinley assumed the extent of his involvement would be to “stand by a barricade and pass out fliers.” Today, he’s practically given up his job as a hairdresser to run the Sunset Junction Neighborhood Alliance, which oversees the fair and whose office is housed in a basement room below the coffeehouse.

Over the last two decades, the alliance has contributed money for 25 murals, trees planted along Sunset, a community garden, a park in an abandoned triangle at Edgecliff and Sunset, an after-school sports program through King Middle School and, with the help of a city grant and private donations, the nonprofit Tsunami Coffeehouse.

A Place to Build Confidence

The coffeehouse, now in its sixth year, offers not only a place for kids to earn money for school clothes and CDs but also a way to build confidence.

Students who attend nearby Marshall High School can also fulfill the 20 hours of community service required for graduation at Tsunami. Filled with colorful overstuffed couches and chairs on a hardwood floor, it’s a comfortable, funky hangout where kids can drink coffee or juice and join a study group led by older students.

In some cases, McKinley says, he sees that the kids who work and graduate--and may not have otherwise--are becoming role models for their friends and younger siblings.

“Some of the young women are the first to graduate in their families,” he says. “It’s a lot of work to get a kid up and running, but then they help their own.”

McKinley says he can identify with the kids, because he was one of seven children from a poor family with an alcoholic father. “The thing that changed my life and changes [these kids] is exposure. Some of them have never been west of Highland [Avenue]. They’ve heard of the Beverly Center, but they’ve never seen it. There’s one 13-year-old who had never been to a movie. We assume everybody’s on the same playing field, but we’re not. Exposing them to things--like running a coffeehouse and meeting people--makes them feel more confident. It changes them.”

Two decades after the first street fair, the neighborhood gang members are “integrated into the community now” and “less a threat,” according to Delugach. So that leaves the fair with a different mission: to fund youth programs.

And the celebration that Delugach says was “initially pretty revolutionary” is now a “community institution” (although she would like to see it become an alcohol-free event). For two days, the community acknowledges everything that is different.

“It’s finally evolved into what we wanted,” says McKinley. “Everybody coexists.”

* Sunset Junction Street Fair, 3600 to 4400 blocks of Sunset Boulevard, Silver Lake. The booths and carnival rides are open 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday. Entertainment begins at 1 p.m. both days. The daytime hours are most suitable for families; the evenings, when the beer garden and headline entertainers get into full swing, are more appropriate for adults. Donation: $5 (no one is turned away for lack of funds). Information: (323) 661-7771.