Culture con coffee

The Border Balladeers are warbling tales of heartbreak and migration at Espresso Mi Cultura, a combination coffeehouse, art gallery and bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard. The acoustic trio performs by the front window, where a neon Aztec figure signals the venue’s modern Latino identity, urban and contemporary but rooted in tradition.

The bright and colorful cafe becomes a comforting refuge for bundled-up customers who trickle in from a chilly evening drizzle.

Settled into multicolored chairs to match their multiracial backgrounds, they soak up the trio’s repertoire of traditional ranchera and country-western music, a blend as distinctive as the Mexican mocha, a house specialty. At this L.A. cafe, customers get strong shots of culture with their cups of joe.

Espresso Mi Cultura -- a Spanish play on words that can also be read as “I express my culture” -- is one of the most popular of a growing number of Latino-themed cafes that have been percolating all across Southern California. From Sylmar to Santa Monica, from Pomona to Pasadena, these culturally conscious coffeehouses offer literature with their lattes, music with their mochas and poetry with their cappuccinos, all with a Latino flavor.

The cafes are owned independently by a new generation of community-oriented Latino entrepreneurs who reflect the demographic they serve -- many are bicultural, descendants of immigrants, with college degrees and disposable income. In creating cafes as bilingual cultural spaces, they’ve tapped into two formidable forces: the demand for strong, flavorful coffee and the need for outlets for Latino artistic expression, pent up for years like the compressed steam in an espresso machine.

“The cafe is an entryway into something much larger than we could ever imagine those four walls providing,” says Evonne Gallardo of Self-Help Graphics, a pioneering East L.A. arts center. “The next cultural movement breeds itself in these small spaces, and people don’t even know it. It’s the ideas of tomorrow that are brewing there.”

So what is it that makes a cafe Latino?

“You can say it’s the art, or the music or the books,” says Espresso’s co-owner, Ramon Pantoja, a former Time Warner accountant who created his store’s Mexican mocha with Abuelita brand chocolate.

“But alone, none of that would make this place what it is. It’s almost an intangible. There’s a spirit here. There’s a warmth that’s been created from different factors, and it comes together in this place.”

Like many minority-owned mom-and-pop shops, these small business are struggling. The coffee is reliable, but the art, music and decor can be hit or miss. What they lack in refined amenities, however, they often make up in local color, friendliness or funkiness.

Sometimes, emerging Latino celebrities appear at these cozy spots. Syndicated Chicano cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz meeting admirers at Pomona’s Cafe con Libros. Or Quetzal, the excellent East L.A. Afro-jarocho band, doing an intimate acoustic set at Sylmar’s Tia Chucha’s Cafe. Or screenwriter Josefina Lopez (“Real Women Have Curves”) performing skits at Espresso’s midnight cabaret.

But mostly the cafes highlight undiscovered talents. A night of Nicaraguan music, dance and poetry at Angeles Bohemios in Silver Lake. A Chicano student film festival at House of Brews in San Fernando. A Venezuelan bonche (or fiesta) complete with arepas (a typical dish) at Bolivar Cafe and Gallery in Santa Monica.

“It’s cool,” concludes customer Danni Meyerson, a young teacher and musician from Irvine, as she browses the books at Espresso Mi Cultura. “This is what California is.”

When you step into one of these coffeehouses, you know you’re not in Seattle. They are part of a growing grass-roots counterpoint to those corporate coffee chains that for years could be found everywhere except in minority neighborhoods. Now, a Starbucks has opened down the street from Espresso. And farther north along the Golden State Freeway in San Fernando, another Starbucks recently started competing with House of Brews, one of the newest Latino-owned cafes.

Proprietors Frank and Blanca Diaz claim theirs was the first coffeehouse in the heavily Latino town, opening about a year and a half ago. Located in Library Plaza on North Maclay Avenue, the cafe gets the lunch crowd from the nearby courthouse during the day. But at night, it’s all locals -- a blue-collar worker with his pony-tailed daughter; a couple of stocky, tattooed cholos, and an intense group of Latino teenagers huddled over a table near the brick fireplace playing their favorite game -- chess.

“My wife and I always said the city was lacking a coffeehouse,” says Frank Diaz, a carpenter by trade who built the store. “And that was only because everybody said San Fernando was high risk. But we said, ‘We’re from the community and we know we need it.’ We opened with our hearts.”

Like its name, House of Brews gives few overt clues to its Latino identity. Inside an alcove hidden from main sight, a large portrait of farm labor leader Dolores Huerta gazes down on computer stations with wireless connections to the Internet. And among the gift items for sale, there’s a small painted sign with a prayer that has only a single Spanish word, evoking the gossipy relationship among women who are godmothers to each other’s children: “Lord, if I can’t be skinny, please make my comadres fat.”

At the register, another sign suggests one way customers can express their culture: “Friends don’t let friends drink Starbucks.”

Somewhere behind the artistic facade of these colorful cafes, there’s a serious social theory about why they started appearing over the last decade. Some see a link to an underground cultural movement in L.A. barrios inspired by the 1994 uprising of Zapatista rebels in southern Mexico. That indigenous rebellion, in the heart of a culturally rich region, ignited the imagination of L.A.’s painters, writers and musicians, such as members of Quetzal, who specialize in fusions of son jarocho, the lively music of southern Mexico. These artists-activists visited Chiapas and saw how the Zaptistas used native art as an organizing tool. They came home filled with the zeal to connect with their own communities in Southern California. But they realized they had no place to do it.

The need for cultural spaces was so great, especially on the heavily Latino Eastside, some activists created a cafe without walls. They called it the Eastside Cafe, a movable gathering place that last year staged neighborhood concerts, starting with a show at El Sereno’s Mazatlan Ballroom, featuring Quetzal and other local bands.

The Eastside Cafe is not a place, say its organizers. It’s a state of mind.

“That state of mind is that corner, that chair, that mini-space where liberating thoughts come that cannot be stopped,” says co-founder Roberto Flores, a teacher, USC doctoral candidate and father of bandleader Quetzal Flores. “The Zapatista movement showed us that people could, with 100 times less resources, do 100 times more than what we’re doing here. Sometimes we get hung up and we don’t move because we don’t have the space, when just talking to someone else can incite and provoke a difference.”

The ideology gets as thick as the coffee sometimes. Yet, there really is a community evolving out of this nascent network of coffeehouses. The owners know one another and even share ideas. Often, they’ll post one another’s fliers announcing concerts and community events.

This fall, two cafes in L.A.’s rough-and-tumble Rampart neighborhood plan to join forces on the Day of the Dead, forming a ceremonial bridge across MacArthur Park. Owners envision a candlelight procession from Luna Tierra Sol Cafe on the north side to Mama’s Hot Tamales Cafe on the south.

The cafe-to-cafe ceremony is the idea of Sandra Romero-Plasencia, a veteran Chicana community worker who is the Mama of Mama’s Hot Tamales. Why do separate events, she asked singer-guitarist Tito Sahua of Luna Tierra Sol, when collaborating would be better for both businesses. More recently, Sahua performed a folklorico set at Mama’s place. “It’s all a family circle,” Mama says.

Like family members, though, each cafe has its own identity. Each strikes its own balance between art and activism.

Luna Tierra Sol, for example, operates as a worker-owned collective with a scruffy, radical ambience reminiscent of Berkeley in the ‘60s. Che Guevara and Bob Marley T-shirts are for sale and the revolutionary Mano Negra (Black Hand), Manu Chao’s former band, plays on the sound system. On its Web site, Luna Tierra Sol (Moon Land Sun) promotes itself as “one of the only places in Los Angeles where you can come express yourself, eat a vegetarian meal and be part of social change.”

Mama’s Hot Tamales takes a much more above-ground approach to community involvement. It grew out of a public-private effort to legalize Latino street vendors, who now operate sanctioned stalls in the park across the street. Its nonprofit mission is to serve as a training ground for apprentices. The tamales are made from scratch by the vendors themselves in a variety of styles -- Oaxacan, Honduran or Salvadoran -- using corn husks, banana or avocado leaves.

“Every item on the menu,” says Romero-Plasencia, “represents a person from that country.” In the rear, there’s a big wooden table used for meetings of civic groups and city officials. A literature section, Bohemia Books, also features unique indigenous arts and crafts -- a colorful huipil (traditional blouse) from Chiapas or beaded Huichol Indian figures from Nayarit, Mexico. The sit-down dining room is dominated by a dramatic mural by Suzanne Urquiza depicting the cultivation of maize as a cultural force. The colorful chairs carved with toucans and flowers in the backrests were brought from Rosarito, Mexico, by Mama herself. And she also scoured the dusty shelves of a local store for cans of paint -- “the brightest of each color” -- to splash on the walls.

Every year, Mama also helps celebrate Day of the Dead at the Zona Rosa Caffe, clear across town in Pasadena. Romero-Plasencia creates an altar for her uptown counterpart, taking the age-old indigenous tradition to a much more affluent and ethnically mixed neighborhood in the city’s Playhouse District.

Zona Rosa’s owner, Michael Moreno, asserts a critical bragging right: He says he started the whole Latino cafe thing.

The 39-year-old Mexican American, born and raised in Alhambra, opened his coffeehouse nine years ago, well ahead of all the others. He started with a simple concept that now could be every cafe’s slogan: “I liked coffee and I wanted to share my culture.”

Moreno selects his beans from “the oldest and most experienced roaster” in San Francisco. He sells only Latin American blends from Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru and elsewhere. His entertainment is all Latin too -- samba, mariachi, Latin jazz.

But his clientele comes from all over the world. They are Italians, Bosnians, French and Swiss, many living in the area. “It’s really a very cool cultural hub,” says Moreno, who has his graphic design studio next door. “It’s very eclectic. And that’s what I wanted -- a neighborhood cafe where people could hang out and see art and hear music and talk politics.”

Moreno may have opened the first cafe, but Josie Aguilar, the other owner of Espresso Mi Cultura, says she thought of it first. The concept came to her more than 12 years ago when she was working as a planner for the city of San Fernando. At the time, the city was developing Library Plaza, that mall on Maclay Avenue where House of Brews is located. She pitched the idea of “a multicultural bookstore that sells coffee” to the private developer. “That sounds fantastic!” he said. “Where can I go see this?”

“You can’t,” said Aguilar, whose master’s is in urban planning from UCLA. “It doesn’t exist yet.”

It would take years for Aguilar to implement the idea herself at Espresso. “I couldn’t believe that in an area like Los Angeles with so many Latinos, so many Mexicans, there was not a place like this,” says Aguilar as the Border Balladeers play. In fact, Aguilar is planning to branch out on her own with a new cafe, closer to East L.A. “We should have one of these in every neighborhood,” she says.

That would be fine by Efrain Garibay, a UCLA grad student in urban planning who treks across town, passing closer cafes, to sit with his laptop at Espresso.

Says the athletic, goateed native of Michoacan, Mexico: “This is one of the few places in Los Angeles that helps me feel a sense of belonging.”

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Five signs you’re in a Latino cafe:

1. Mexican mocha is on the menu.

2. The book section carries the essential troika of biographies: Che Guevara, Emiliano Zapata and Subcomandante Marcos.

3. Walls and ceilings are painted in vibrant colors evoking the palette of Latin American murals, or at least one wall is a mural.

4. Its art exhibit has featured, is featuring or will soon feature the ubiquitous paintings by L.A. grade-school teacher Jose Ramirez.

5. The owner pines for the good old days when members of East L.A. bands Quetzal or Ozomatli used to hang around and play for the fun of it.

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Best of the brew

Espresso Mi Cultura Cafe

5625 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 466-0481

This lively hangout helped spark the Latino cafe trend. A mock-up of the space is featured in “Chicano Now: American Expressions,” a multimedia exhibit now touring the U.S.

Zona Rosa Caffe

15 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena (626) 793-2334

Its eclectic crowd includes Art Center students, whose works are occasionally displayed. In spring and summer, Latin jazz concerts are held every Thursday in the courtyard.

Mama’s Hot Tamales Cafe

& Gallery

2124 W. 7th St., Los Angeles

(213) 487-7474

The homemade tamales are the attraction here, but the adjacent Bohemia Books offers excellent indigenous art and crafts.

Luna Tierra Sol Cafe

2501 W. 6th St., Los Angeles,

(213) 380-4754

Come for the radical anti-chic ambience, the hatha yoga classes or the tofu tacos.

Tia Chucha’s Cafe

12737 Glenoaks Blvd. #22, Sylmar, ( 818) 362-7060

Owned by veteran Chicano poet-activist Luis Rodriguez and named after his Aunt Chucha, it’s busy with music, book signings and weekly events, like Wednesday film nights and Friday rap and poetry readings.

Angeles Bohemios Cafe

3200 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 667-1083

A tad too dark but it can get lively. Broken Mike, for aspiring acoustic cantautores (singer-songwriters), is held the first Sunday of every month. Try the ice blended mango latte.

House of Brews

Library Plaza, 231 N. Maclay Ave., San Fernando, (818) 365-8788

The first cafe in town, it’s the site of San Fernando High’s annual student film festival. This year Can 4 Festival del Cine will take place Aug. 2. in the courtyard across from the library.

Bolivar Cafe and Gallery

1741 Ocean Park Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 581-2344

Owned by a Venezuelan man and Japanese American woman who met at Cal State Long Beach, this spot became a hangout for Venezuelans. Even a new band was spawned from musicians who met here, playing a Venezuelan folk and jazz fusion.

Rockotitlan

1277 N. Wilton Place, Hollywood, (323) 468-8900

This is perhaps the newest of the Latino art and music cafes, opened in February. It’s small so look up -- some of the art is displayed on the ceiling.