A blond in a black dress ordering coffee. That’s who you see around a corner in A. Park at Café Volan. Paul Goldfinger photo © 9/14/17 Click to enlarge.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor@Blogfinger.net
It seems like Greenwich Village by the sea. Café Volan can be a bit hard to find. It’s tucked into a side street, at an angle off of Cookman, unobtrusive on the left side of Bangs Avenue.
When you walk in, it feels like a beat up Beatnik hangout from the sixties. You expect to find Alan Ginsburg sipping an espresso. The crowd is not boisterous; in fact it is downright in whisper mode with no laughing. The customers seem serious, but maybe that’s because they are seriously enjoying a superb cup of real coffee. The cappuccino’s are excellent, although they serve them warm–the baristas say that’s the correct temperature.
I like the vibe at Café Volan. Steve Valk, who is spending a month in the Grove (from Germany where he lives) loves to go there; it’s about the mood and the coffee. We met there to discuss a variety of subjects. The place feels comfortable.
Steve is is enjoying his family in the Grove while developing some serious academic ideas as he plans for his PhD studies. Next week he will go to Duke for discussions with faculty there.
But now, in the Grove–where he spent his childhood summers—he tries to figure out how we could obtain some coherence among the Groverian factions. Steve has a lot of experience working with diverse populations and he is an optimist.
He wants to meet with anybody in authority: CMA/Neptuners/HOA or whoever would agree to talk to him (besides Blogfinger—we like to talk to Steve) because he has ideas as to how to pull this town together.
Personally, I don’t see much chance of that without a sea change in attitudes among Grovers of various stripes.
BOB DYLAN. He would like Volan. He played a lot of coffee houses in the day. This song is from his latest album Triplicate.
“I Could Have Told You” is a Sinatra song and a standard. It’s a far cry from the folk music scene of the fifties and sixties, but Volan is a far cry from Bleeker Street and the Bitter End.
