Coffee, Black, Hold the Noise : Competition for Cappuccino Dollars Sparks Bad Amateur Poetry Readings and Demand for a Quiet Place to Read

The coffeehouse: a congenial place, a place to ruminate, to meet friends, to read a book in solitude.

In theory. And in the opinion of some coffeehouse fans.

Recently, Annene Kaye went to the Lulu’s Alibi coffeehouse in West Los Angeles, but she ended up leaving quickly. The reason: two musicians in the corner, making the place so noisy that she couldn’t have a quiet conversation.

“There was no excuse for that,” complains Kaye, a former New Yorker and coffeehouse habitue. “The whole idea of a coffeehouse as a place to talk and read seems to have been just a phase. Now, you want to go in and spend some time, and you run smack dab into some big production.”

With dozens of coffeehouses in Los Angeles and new ones opening every month, owners are scheduling more and more events to compete for their share of the cappuccino dollar. Musicians. Shakespeare readings. Performance art. Songwriter showcases. Improv groups. And, everywhere, poetry readings performed by amateurs who often have more enthusiasm than inspiration.

Where can you go when you just want to read a book in peace?

“We’re a reaction to the fad,” says Ted Wagner, manager of the Novel Cafe just off Santa Monica’s Main Street. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, every table is filled with people reading books. The Novel Cafe is one of a handful of L.A. coffeehouses setting a trend: It’s also a bookstore, with thousands of titles on the shelves.

The only regular activity at the Novel is on Thursday nights, when musicians and poetry readings are held. The rest of the time it’s a place for reading and conversation. For the price of a cup of coffee, customers are invited to borrow a book from the shelves and relax for a while at a table or on a chaise longue.

The simple formula proved successful. Open only a year and a half, the Novel expanded last August, and it’s busy from early morning till closing (2 a.m. on weekends). The tranquillity of the Novel has also attracted a group of chess aficionados, who set up their boards on the second-story balcony.

UCLA graduate student David Erikson was on the forefront of a local trend several years ago when he opened Java, one of the city’s first big coffeehouses, and now he’s in on the new wave. He sold his share in Java last year and opened Big & Tall Books--a bookstore/coffeehouse with an emphasis on cutting-edge titles.

In addition to a strong fiction section, Big & Tall also sells a selection of popular underground comics (Love & Rockets, Eightball, Drawn and Quarterly), as well as titles from the hippest underground publishers, like Feral Press, RE/search, and Semiotext(e). Reading a new book over coffee is tolerated, if not encouraged. “We’ve lost a lot of books that way,” says Erikson.

One thing you won’t find at Big & Tall: amateur poetry readings.

“I kind of hate those things,” Erikson says mildly, sipping a decaf cappuccino in the cafe area at the back of the store. “We tried it at Java and the quality just wasn’t there.”

Though he’s considering holding an outdoor reading series in the parking lot this summer, Erikson stresses, “We don’t want to have too many events. People like to come here just to hang out.”

North Hollywood’s Iguana Cafe is a little bit of everything: coffeehouse, boutique, performance space and used record and bookstore. However, owner Tom Ianniello actively encourages his customers to hang out for hours. “Read anything you want, but if you spill coffee on it, it’s yours,” he says.

The store’s full name, The People’s Democratic Republic of Iguanaland, connotes the Iguana’s Berkeley flavor. It’s comfortably furnished with mismatched sofas and chairs and coffee is provided on the honor system.

And--a heretical concept--there is no cappuccino or espresso.

The books for sale include everything from first editions to paperback fiction, and Ianniello also does special orders. The Iguana stocks more than 200 independently published poetry chapbooks, including the store’s own “Dance of the Iguana.” Michael Blake and Exene Cervenka are among the writers who have appeared at the store and contributed to the magazine.

The Iguana has something happening on stage every night, but it opens at 3 in the afternoon. “That gives you seven hours of book browsing if that’s what you want to do,” says Ianniello.

L. A. being L. A., some coffeehouse patrons seem to use books as status symbols. It’s conspicuous reading, the theory that you are what you read.

“At Java,” says Erikson, “I used to see people reading a certain book in the hope that someone would pick up on them.”

“People use books as props,” says Kaye. “The worst of all are people who read screenplays in coffeehouses. It’s a blatant attempt to start a conversation. Besides, anyone with anything to do in Hollywood wouldn’t be sitting in a coffeehouse all day.”

As Kaye spoke, the next table was occupied by one of L.A.’s neo-bohemians, complete with pricey leather jacket, obligatory earring and a stack of books next to his coffee. Atop the stack was a script with the cover removed, allowing passersby to see the title: “Lethal Weapon 3.”

Erikson says the author he most frequently sees being read is the French surrealist Georges Bataille, whose books are also his store’s biggest sellers. Other titles seen often on the coffeehouse circuit include Camille Paglia’s “Sexual Personae” and the granddaddy of all coffeehouse literature, Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.”

In addition, many coffeehouses have a small shelf stocked with loaners for those who haven’t brought their own books.

The Six Gallery coffeehouse in West Hollywood has hundreds of idiosyncratic titles, ranging from a complete 1957 World Book Encyclopedia to works by Shirley Chisholm and L. A. mystery novelist Joseph Hansen. There are also two copies of “The Diary of Samuel Pepys” and a copy of the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook.

At Cafe Beckett on Hollywood Boulevard, an adjunct of the Celtic Arts Center next door, one can read Leon Uris or Shakespeare or a smattering of biographies that include those of John F. Kennedy, Charlie Chaplin and Judy Garland.

“Every book on that shelf I pulled out of a garbage can,” admits Rich Brenner, owner of the Highland Grounds coffeehouse in Hollywood, as he gestures to his battered collection of paperbacks. Like the Iguana, Highland Grounds features some sort of live entertainment seven nights a week, but Brenner points out, “You can come in here and read all day long if you want.”