Coffee Gallery owner Julie Sandoval in the foreground has big plans for the coffee house's entertainment offerings.
by Timothy Rutt
It’s a whole new era for the Coffee Gallery.
With its entertainment license from the county now firmly in place, the coffee house at 2029 N. Lake is ramping up its offerings with entertainment five nights a week.
Coffeehouse owner Julie Sandoval has been offering open mic nights, poetry readings, comedy and music at the venue for quite awhile now, but she said she really wanted to make it a showcase for local talent, with an Altadena twist: even when there’s something programmed, there has to be an element of “hey, I can walk in and get on stage.” And, usually, there’ll be great food, too.
“The thing I like about this is that this is a place where you can bring a child,” Sandoval said. “It’s safe, it’s family-friendly -- although I have to remind the comedians of that sometimes.”
The schedule will be:
- Tuesday: Comedy Open Mic Night, where comedians from Altadena, Pasadena, and surrounding areas can try out their material. “We get some professional performers who practice their Ice House schtick here,” Sandoval said.
- Thursday: Artisan Alley, a wide-ranging night that combines an art reception with scheduled acts and open mic poetry and music.
- Friday: Open Mic Night, open to the community. Sandoval said that “it’s taken a kind of David Letterman approach,” where the host will ask the performer questions -- some of them off-the-wall -- before they perform.
- Saturday: Potlikker Showcase, a combination of music and spoken word events. First Saturday of the month is “Verge of the Beat,” a storytelling series curated by local storyteller/podcaster Lance Anderson. The Showcase also features DJ Beat Gozon (aka Jeff Klein), who will spin appropriate music, and is highlighted by “Vittles by Julie” -- Sandoval’s own Southern-bred greens and cornbread dishes.
- Sunday: Music Open Mic Night
Sandoval is very excited about the new schedule, especially Thursday and Saturday nights, which are entirely new. Artisan Alley is put together by one of the Coffee Gallery regulars, known as King, who enlisted two friends known as Dollar and Mac to form The Definition, a group to curate an evening of art, music and storytelling.
King said that Julie approached him and said, “would you be interested in doing an open mic?
“Now, I don’t have time to do this, as I do a bunch of things, but I love her. She’s a great person, so I said yes immediately.”
King said that Dollar is the art curator, who will organize an exhibit and reception from a local artist every two weeks in the conference room of the coffee house. King and Mac gather the music acts, with King specializing in hip-hop and Mac in other genres.
Thursday’s grand opening of Artisan Alley at 7 PM features musical acts Lighting Cloud and MisLeeDing, which King says “is going to be a little heavier on the hip-hop side,” but there will be a DJ to mix things up musically between acts. And, he says, there will be an open mic section -- and barbecue cooking outside.
“That’s the vision,” King said. “Julie has such an amazing heart for the community and is really through her love toward the community that really fires my motivation to make Artisan Alley what it is.”
Artisan Alley starts at 7, but King encourages people to start coming in about 6:30.
Sandoval said that Bob Stane, who runs the Coffee Gallery Backstage performance space, a separate business, in the back of the building, has been very supportive of what’s going on up front, even to the degree of booking performers for his own venue that he’s first heard on the front stage.
Coffee Gallery hours are 6 AM-6 PM on Mondays and Wednesdays; 6 AM-10 PM Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays; and 7 AM-10 PM Saturdays and Sundays. The website is funkylittlecoffeehouse.com.
