COFFEE HOUSE IMPROV THEATER EVENT

I’ve always had this dream to one day open a coffeehouse of my own. Perhaps if I win the lottery and the days become twice as long I can open one in New York sometime before I retire. If not, I’ll settle for after retirement. It’s a business that I’d feel passionate about; I’m sure it would do well. Bus Boys and Poets is a new coffeehouse/restaurant/ bookstore/theater that recently opened in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood. I’ve been hanging out in the area for a few years now and I can honestly say that this place is well overdue. In addition to hosting author signings in the bookstore, the theater has great stand up, open mic poetry, and recently showcased Avery Brooks onstage. It’s the most diverse hotspot in town. Every kind of color, young, old, girls, guys, gay and straight, and everyone jives pretty well. The space’s aesthetics are great; the coffee isn’t bad either.

This spot will definitely be missed when I leave. The manager threw me a card upon my first visit and suggested I check out the website, so I did. The site’s design is very appealing, to say the least. It even has background music! (I’m a big fan of background music on the web.) Upon examination of the web designer’s portfolio (accessible via his site), I realized that this guy was doing a few of the things I love to do.

My parents always encouraged me to follow my passion, but somehow I always felt my dad pressuring me to go into science – medicine specifically. I did what any impressionable teenager would do in my situation. I followed the advice of my father and took Biology (even though I chickened out of Med School ), but not without taking English as well. Turned out to be my saving grace.

Through it all, I’ve had this burn to design things, whether in print or on the web. I was always designing flyers and newsletters in college. As the President of my University’s Drama Society I organized a “coffee-house improv theater” event one year. I cut and pasted and typed up the promotional pieces, including a program which was used for the event. (This was before fancy computer software or self publishing.) I thoroughly enjoyed the experience but never considered it occupation material.

Now, years later I look at some of the designing I’ve done and realize there’s a bigger demand for it out there now. Design innovation is proliferating like technology is advancing – rapidly. It’s all very exciting.

But something in the website’s design takes me back to that coffee-house program I designed in college. It’s exactly the type of design I’d do back then, only without the computer software. Whenever I visit the Bus Boys and Poets website I think of that night at the student union. There’s an interesting connection between my taste, the web designer’s work, the event schedule at Bus Boys and Poets, and my coffee-house improv experience. I haven’t connected the dots yet, but hopefully this project will help.

Looking at this image with its cut and pasted pieces, it causes me to think creatively. It is not boxed in, does not adhere to specific lines or boundaries. It has a certain naivete, innocence, even humility about it. Construction paper, crayons, experimentation, equation.

I'm going to see if I can dig up that old program. I'm sure I have it somewhere.

Christopher de la Torre ©2005