Blue Jordan Coffeehouse History

Last weekend I had the pleasure of playing at the 10 years of Blue Jordan Bash, held at the Rohs Street Cafe in Clifton. It was a great time to hear friends play ... I hadn't heard anyone in such a while. I wrote up some of the history of the Blue Jordan Coffeehouse prior to the event and thought I'd share it with you :

I have wondered for years now what exactly gives people the bug to open a coffeehouse. Something about hosting friends in a warm and inviting living room atmosphere, serving them something wonderful to eat and drink, and listening to good music together … I suppose a person could do this at home, but creating this as a place to get away to somehow becomes a desire of a certain breed of people.

In 1992, friends of mine, Brian and Tibbett Merusi were preparing to work abroad with YWAM. To raise financial support, they put the parable of the 10 talents into practical use. They divided up $1,000 among 20 friends with a letter asking them to invest it creatively or give it back to them at the end of the summer. I put my money together with Tony Escamilla and we ran a coffeehouse in my house at the time, 4660 Howard Avenue in Northside. We took most of the furniture out and set up card tables and chairs, ran a kitchen with desserts and coffee and had a sound system with performing musicians up on the third floor. We charged $5.00 to get in and all the money we made went back to the Merusi’s . ( I think we made 2 or 3 hundred dollars. )
I remember Phyllis Hoke worked the kitchen, various musicians played, little white lights strung up everywhere and all of my furniture stuffed into one room, while we used the rest of the house as a coffeehouse. We called it the Howard House Coffee Hour. So much fun and lots of work. I received many requests to repeat it every week to which I laughed.
Because of so much positive feedback and in an attempt to raise even more money for the Merusi’s, we ran it again in a few months and it was a great success again. About a year later, I started searching for a store front to put it in and found this tiny place near where I lived, abandoned by a caterer who had recently had a stroke. This store front was a few doors down from what is now the Comet in upper Northside. I took an accountant friend of mine, Mary Mallon, and showed her the run down wreck of a space and described all the potential I saw. She later confided to me how crazy it sounded to her at the time. Meanwhile, down in Northside at a junk shop I found a batch of café tables and chairs for cheap … needed new seats on the chairs. Those table bases are around here somewhere … at Vineyard Central or the Speckled Bird Café, I think. Not sure where the chairs are, but I see one here and there. I also found a big batch of white coffee mugs, a coffee maker or two. I had a sound system. Now all we needed was rehab. More later.