The Times-Picayune
Popular coffee shop reopens
By Lynne Jensen
After almost two years of wrestling for repair money, serving free java to Katrina workers and returning regulars and hammering out a long-awaited redo, the Fair Grinds Coffee House is perking again. It reopened this month, bringing smiles to the lips of caffeine-sippers who are fixtures at the establishment, once a book-making joint near the Fair Grounds racetrack.
The layout has changed, but the pace and the people are familiar. Patrons can expect owner Robert Thompson to hand them a pair of 3-D glasses to view the artwork of Amzie Adams, who wore the glasses while creating paintings hanging on coffeehouse walls.
“He’s the perpetual hippie,” co-owner Elizabeth Thompson said about Adams, a local performance artist recognized by his white beard and top hat.
Adams and fellow artist Shakor are just two among many creative souls who frequent the coffeehouse on Ponce de Leon Street near Esplanade Avenue.
“They were giving us free coffee after the storm,” Shakor said about the Thompsons. “I couldn’t believe it.”
Though the coffeehouse closed as a business after Katrina, there was free coffee everyday, rain or shine, WIFI service and music there some nights.
Red Cross volunteers, FEMA workers and television crews from across the country were drawn to the Fair Grinds after the storm. Returning residents joined the crowd who sat outside the coffeehouse “for news and reunions,” Elizabeth Thompson said.
It didn’t take regulars long to claim freshly painted tables after the reopening.
One round table bubbled with laughter during conversation shared by a newspaper photographer, an artist, a carpenter, a film maker and a psychologist. It’s a table of mostly men, where a nurse named Sharon sometimes sits.
She’s one of two women named Sharon “who’ve managed to crack the circle,” Robert Thompson said.
“There’s a mixture of people here,” said patron James Badeaux, 79, who said he walks seven blocks from home to the coffee shop several days a week. “You get some interesting conversation . . . And after the storm, we’re helping each other.”
The Thompsons had planned a celebration for Aug. 29, 2005. They opened the coffeehouse on that date in 2002. Instead, they wound up in Houston, while two feet of water made mush out of the contents of their livelihood.
The Thompsons are Texans who met at the Tulane University coffeehouse while he was a student at Tulane and she at Newcomb. They invested in the building on Ponce de Leon soon after 9/11, and canvassed the neighborhood to see what kind of business residents wanted there. They wanted a coffeehouse.
“I wanted it to be a socially responsible business,” Robert Thompson said, noting that a room upstairs is used for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and as a cozy entertainment venue, where writers such as Chris Champagne recently performed his “Cirque de Dogris” satirical romp through the political landscape of post-Katrina New Orleans.
“This group here is so eclectic,” said patron Sara Landrieu. “It’s a total community. Before the storm we’d have potluck dinners on Friday nights. One time we had 200 people out here.”
The Thompsons said their return can be credited in part to patrons who offered help, ranging from carpentry to painting to keeping milk for coffee in their refrigerators.
“There’s a true sense of customer ownership here,” Robert Thompson said.
Unlike many businesses that are having trouble finding workers, “there’s a waiting list” to work at the coffee shop, Elizabeth Thompson said.
Managers Ali and Chris Kuemmel are back, and the place is packed daily with familiar faces. Most patrons walk or ride bikes to the coffeehouse.
“It’s kind of like a neighborhood bar without the booze,” said coffeehouse patron and Delgado student John Russell.
Of the many reasons to be happy that the Fair Grinds is up an running again, one stands out, Robert Thompson said. “It’s great not to be asked ‘When are you going to open?’ “
