Java
Macabre
Northwest 23rd
Avenue and Pettygrove Street, 228-3667
Ghost of Juan
Valdez: Strawberry and pistachio ice cream with sweet
espresso, chocolate sauce, topped with whipped cream and
chocolate-covered espresso beans.
GENTLE READERS:
Miss Dish recently got a tip from Goth central that there
was a new coffeehouse in town called Java Macabre,
where horror posters line the walls, desserts have names like
Bela Vanilla Lugosi, the motto is "open to midnight every
night" and the staff are willing to play the Cure on demand.
Ever the fan of the living dead (except for those Phish fellows),
Miss Dish was on it!
Stepping into an old Victorian at Northwest 23rd Avenue
and Pettygrove, the former corporate headquarters of the
now bought-out Marsee Baking (talk about spirits
with a bone to pick!), Miss Dish was summoned by the dank
sounds of Depeche Mode and a collection of chairs and tables
that could've been swiped from some great aunt's house.
The menu contains the standard selection of coffee drinks,
light meals and soups, pastries and pretty parfaits to choose
from, and the room is full of little corners in which to
hide yourself from the world. A cement deck to the side
allows for slurping al fresco. Not quite the flowering frivolity
of, say, the Pied Cow, but Java Macabre will certainly
become home to Portland's other teens--the ones who
aren't in school plays and don't write for the student newspaper.
Blessed be!
Owner Alex McIntosh was not on-site during Miss
Dish's visit--according to a staffer he was "off at that
hippie thing in Eugene." But on his return, the 32-year-old
first-time restaurateur/coffee man got on the horn with
Miss Dish to explain himself.
"I'm a complete amateur," he said. But he has passion.
McIntosh was inspired by a ghost a friend made this past
Halloween; it quickly turned into the theme for the coffeehouse.
The first two weeks of business have seen a steady flow
of coffee suckers--and many have asked when he might start
a horror-film night, something he is mulling over. But he
doesn't want the theme to get ahead of him. "I want to keep
it cozy, not too over-the-top," he says. "I don't want it
to get too spooky."
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