HOW LIFE CAFE BEGAN
While writing his Pulitzer-Prize-winning musical Rent, Jonathan Larson visited Life Cafe. If you’ve seen the show you probably remember the scene where the characters danced on the tables of Life Cafe and sang La Vie Boheme. Why did Jonathan choose this East Village institution to be in his play of love, life and hope?
The basis of the story behind Rent is akin to Life’s story which is also a story of love, life and hope – and about rent, or rather, trying to pay it. It’s a tale of how the tiny coffee house opened in 1981 almost by accident in the front section of the storefront that a young couple, Kathy and David, rented to live their life and make art. It’s a story about how quickly the cafe became an anchor and the heart of the neighborhood serving inexpensive food and drink while hosting poetry readings, performance, musical and visual art shows in the midst of the culturally explosive1980s East Village rock ‘n roll art scene. It’s a story that provides the answer to the question visitors to the Cafe are always asking, “How’d this place get started anyway?”
The answer became the inspiration for the book How Life Began; the Search for Love, Hope and Huevos Rancheros at the Life Café in New York City by Life Cafe’s co-founder Kathleen Kirkpatrick. Brielfy, it goes like this:
Tired of the offerings in Lansing, Michigan, in 1976 Kathy Kirkpatrick and her husband David packed up a rusty old Chevy Suburban and a tent trailer with art supplies, a load of dried grains and beans (the staple of their vegetarian diet) their three greyhounds and $40, all the money they had “to find a city to live in.” They headed to the American West, going with the flow, camping in the mountains, plains and deserts as well as in friends’ driveways eventually crisscrossing dozens of states west of the Mississippi. David exhausted the destinations on his list and the couple headed back to Michigan. While there he heard about an old high school friend who wanted to sublet his tiny Greenwich Village apartment on MacDougal Street in New York City for three months. Did they want to stay there?, the friend asked. Yes, David told him without hesitation. It was his last chance to find the artistic camaraderie he sought. Once there, Kathy decided to help support this latest adventure by seriously pursuing a career in business management, something she always wanted to do. They arrived in Greenwich Village in the winter of 1980.
After a diligent search, they chose to live in Manhattan’s Lower East Side which offered cheap rents and had a rich and radical artistic history. They found a dilapidated storefront on the corner of 10th Street and Avenue B and made a deal with the landlord for rent credit in exchange for fixing it up. The storefront would be ideal for a combination antique store, artist studio and living space. They came up with a plan to sell the antiques and architectural salvage they had stored in Michigan out of half of the storefront. That way, they hoped, David could earn enough income for him do his art in the other half. Meanwhile, Kathy found a job in midtown Manhattan in corporate sales hoping make enough money to cover living expenses and pay for fixing up the space while making her way up the ladder.
David used his creative skills to make the disintegrated space livable. The first thing that had to be fixed was a caved-in floor but not until three feet of mud and debris was removed from the basement first. After the living area was suitable the antique store was set up. Once opened, however, they discovered people weren’t coming to Alphabet City to buy antiques; they were coming to score and use heroin. Street life on the Lower East Side was dangerous, rough and drug-ridden; it was about survival and the street had its own rules. Fortunately, the couple was befriended by locals who mentored them in the game, leading them to enjoy a relative quiet respect and acceptance in the neighborhood.
Your browser may not support display of this image. While working on the space, a friend from Michigan arrived with a vanload of more antiques that included a four-foot high stack of Life Magazines from the 1940’s and 50’s. Hanging out one night, another friend who lived in the neighborhood warned them of the lack of security in the storefront; the outside walls were patched with pieces of wood and tin carelessly nailed up. Late that night, with the Life Magazines sitting before them, the idea came to camouflage the decrepit storefront by wheat pasting pages from the old Life Magazines onto it. As the group worked on the collage, there was talk of a coffee house. The name “Life Cafe” was born late that night. (And the camouflage worked brilliantly!)
In the early 80’s, the streets of downtown Manhattan were continuously filled with discarded furniture and junk of every sort. David used all the antiques that he had and added other street finds that he and a few friendly locals dropped off incorporating it all into a cafe setting. Kathy set up their Mr. Coffee machine, their one-burner Coleman camp stove and espresso coffee pot which she took from her kitchen in the back. Then she bought pastries from the two old Jewish guys who ran the 9th Street Bakery. Shop was set up. Life Café was born!
Immediately, the locals began to hang out. A neighbor organized Tuesday night poetry readings where poets and writers came to read and rant. Hungry for a space to strut their stuff, other artists approached David to perform. Life Cafe became host to music, performance art, comedy, theater, art installations, and fashion shows. Among those who performed were David Murray, Ann Magnuson, Kembra Pfahler (of Karen Black fame), John Zorn, Bill Laswell, Frankie Lymon’s Nephew, and C Sharpe.
Your browser may not support display of this image. Food was bartered for art to help out the neighborhood artists. Kathy cooked up vegetarian chili and sold it for fifty-cents a bowl so that the locals could afford it. Life Cafe became a space for artists to meet, talk, exchange ideas and perform. On cold winter days, people came to keep warm because their apartments were freezing cold. Actually, on the coldest winter nights it wasn’t much warmer at Life Café either; it just felt warmer being with friends. It was familiar and it felt safe. Any day of the week a visitor would find people writing their novel, short story, poem or play over a cup of coffee. During the afternoons, a local musician who drove everyone mad repeatedly worked out his musical score on an old donated piano. With a warm respect, the locals began calling the couple David and Kathy Life.
At the same time, artist-run galleries began popping up all around Life Cafe alongside bars, late-night clubs and music venues. Nightly the sidewalks swelled from the traffic centered around the ever-constant art opening parties. Photographers from the world over were seen everyday taking pictures of Life Cafe’s wild-looking collaged storefront. The media couldn’t get enough of the East Village. Soon, attracted by all the action, non-bohemians from around the world arrived.
For Life Cafe, there was no profit and little cash flow in selling pastries, fifty-cent chili and charging a two dollar door cover that the couple felt compelled to give to the artists. Economic realities (like rent and utility bills) loomed threateningly. Newcomers from outside the neighborhood were appearing more and more often and they had to be catered to differently than the easy-going locals. Kathy grew tired supporting the effort with an unsatisfying corporate job during the day and working nights and week-ends at the Cafe. It was time for another change. So much had gone into and come out of Life. Instead of closing down the Cafe, she decided to devote her energies full time to make Life Cafe a restaurant.
Today, Kathy is still at Life Cafe. David moved on in the late 80s and became a yogi who founded and still runs the famous Jivamukti Yoga Center in Manhattan. After she took over sole ownership in 1985 and persevered through the ups and downs of the neighborhood and city over the years, Kathy made Life Cafe what it is today maintaining the unique quintessential East Village homespun style.
Life Cafe now offers a full menu for breakfast, lunch, dinner and brunch with a full bar. The sidewalk cafe offers the opportunity to people-watch and enjoy Tompkins Square Park. Some of the original artists and regulars from the old days still stop by to say hello. David Life drops in for a bite now and then. The art performances have ended but the art shows endure. Today Life Cafe shows the brilliant chalk-talk drawings of Kathy’s new husband, John G. Sunderland, a designer, writer and artist.
The original East Village café introduced a sister in Brooklyn in 2002. It serves moderately-priced classic regional American comfort food that includes the signature vegetarian and vegan fare in a relaxed and casual setting. The distinctive atmosphere, friendly staff and social intermingling among staff and visitors, reminiscent of the original days 25 years ago, sets Kathy’s eateries apart from all others. Life Café 983 too is now the heart of a burgeoning artist community.
Life Café’s East Village location is fortunate and grateful to be immortalized in Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer Prize winning play RENT that has been playing to sold-out audiences on Broadway from 1996 to 2008. In 2005 it was made into a major motion picture from Columbia Pictures directed by Chris Columbus. Jonathan was one of those artists who found shelter at Life Cafe, sipping coffee while writing his masterpiece. His is just one Life Cafe story.
