Huntington Beach Community Café launches next week

Strengthening community, one conversation at a time.

That’s the tagline for the Huntington Beach Community Café, which will start brewing up conversations in Surf City starting next week.

The seven-part monthly conversation series will be hosted by the city of Huntington Beach and the Huntington Beach Central Library. Meetings will take place in Rooms C and D of the Central Library on the last Wednesday of each month, skipping December, through May of 2023. They begin Oct. 26 from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Food will be provided at each café, though Councilwoman Natalie Moser hopes they also provide food for thought.

“It’s really just trying to remind people, hey, we’re all neighbors,” she said. “We all have stories and experiences. We are better together and more resilient as a community when we see each other that way, not as enemies but really as more full people. We do deal with emergencies and elections and all of those things, but can we come back to the fact that we’re still just neighbors?”

Moser participated in a trial run on Sept. 27. She said participants sit at tables, switching three times. Throughout the meeting, the facilitator takes Post-it notes from the tables on things that come up in each conversation.

At the practice session, Moser said she talked to Moe Kanoudi, owner of Main Street Eyewear in downtown Huntington Beach.

“He talked about how he moved across the country and what his life was like before he got here,” she said. “I had no idea. You almost want to have more time at the table, because people start saying things and you’d be like, ‘I can talk to this person all night about this.’ That’s what we’re going for, people kind of like rehumanizing each other.

“As a council member, somebody might say to me, ‘OK, this is just soft stuff.’ But I believe that if we can’t talk to each other, then we can’t do the hard work. We can’t get all the other stuff done if we can’t be together as a community.”

A graphic recording also was made of the practice session by Michelle Boos-Stone.

Participants are asked to register in advance for October’s event by visiting bit.ly/hbcc10reg. As of Friday afternoon, there were no seats available but a waiting list had been started.

For future events, register via the Huntington Beach Library Event Page at bit.ly/hblibraryevents.

For more information, contact Christine Ivison at communitycafe@surfcity-hb.org or (714) 315-5128.

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