It’s an iced-coffee day. I take mine to an indoor table at Chango since I hope to read and write and I find the lively conversations out of doors too distracting, colorful as they are. The walls are bare, the Bonaparte show having just been taken down. The Weekly has just arrived, and in it I find one of those three-walls of the mirror moments when I flip open to Seven McDonald’s article The Other Art Tatum. The “other” Art Tatum of this article is a dog, who is the pet of the musician Guy Seyffert. It’s not just that I am at Chango (where I usually have my dog with me) reading about someone who comes to Chango with their dog. The article is a mini-portrait of the neighborhood, where people walk their dogs in Elysian Park, meet because their dogs are friends, take their dogs to Chango for coffee. Name their dogs after musicians.

While I am reading about Art Tatum a pair of silver-haired men stride in briskly, each with a painting in hand. They move rapidly. No nonsense. They go in and out, making perhaps a dozen trips, their pace steady if hurried. You’d think they were loading munitions from the highly focused expressions on their faces. On the Weekly’s calendar pages, I see that there is an art-show opening schedules for Chango this Saturday evening.

A young woman named Becky comes in. I haven’t seen her in many months. She has been in Germany, taking care of her sister, who is ill. She is Becky Stark of the band Lavender Diamond. Today, she is babysitting for a little boy (asleep in his jogger stroller) who is a friend of my daughter (who is at home with her babysitter today). I recall that Becky also sometimes writes for the alternative publication Arthur. We talk about getting together, but it will have to be after I return from a trip our of town and before she goes on tour with her band.

Becky then joins a friend of hers at a different table. Soon, they are approached by a young man who, in greeting, asks, did you see the photo booth at Lucas? (Lucas is a two-shop entity on the same block as Chango. In one storefront there is a hair salon. A couple of doors down is a clothing boutique, which offers partly vintage clothing and also the designs of Nina Lucas, sister of the the salon owner.)
A man rushes into the coffee house with a stack of The Onion. He slaps them down and rushes out. There are the usual musician-fashion-renegade types hanging outside just near the doorway.

I make a mental note to walk down the block to see the photo booth (and, in fact, in a few minutes, this is what I do. Sure enough, it has been installed in the narrow clothing boutique, a full-on spiffy Polaroid booth with a curtain. It looks new. Nina Lucas assures me that it is working.)

But before I head down the block, I want to read Dave Zahniser’s most recent story about Villaraigosa and the LAUSD in the Weekly. After that it’s time for the horoscope. To see if my coffeehouse stars are in alignment.

Photo: Del Mor Apartments and Chango
By Cindy Bennett