Actual Café opens on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland

As the new decade begins, and Generation Twitter matures into a cyber-dependent population, I can’t help but wonder if instant access to people through text messaging, email, and cell phones is actually alienating people from one another.  No one seems to be interested in meeting their neighbors anymore, unless they’ve met them on some on-line dating site.  I miss those places like Cheers where everyone knows your name.  Cyber cafes are great for getting out of the house and all, but they don’t encourage much chatting.  People are too plugged in to their electronics. 

 

Sal Bednarz, an “actual guy,” must have had similar musings before he opened Actual Café on the corner of Alcatraz and San Pablo in Oakland last month.  Actual Café, you see, is an actual café – as opposed to a “wi-fi shack” – where people can go and actually mingle. The premise of Actual, this café destined to become a happening hangout on the border of Oakland and Berkeley, is set out in its manifesto http://www.actualcafe.com:  

 

 

What a great concept, huh? 

 

Actual’s menu features coffee and hot drinks, “breakfast stuff” with “actual granola” ($3), empanadas ($4), or egg sandwiches ($5-$6), and “non-breakfast stuff” after 11, meaning sandwiches (from $4.50 to $7) a “real big salad” ($7), and an empanada plate ($6.50). The beers on tap are Fat Tire Amber Ale, Lagunitas, Haywire, and Trumer Pilsner. The wine is on its way!  As you can see by the prices, this is a very budget-friendly place. 

 

Actual is also a bicycle-friendly place.  My first clue was the interior wall with a dozen hooks protruding from the wall where you can come in and hang up your bike instead of leaving it outside where it is vulnerable to thieves, weather, and clumsy pedestrians.  It’s an ideal place for group cyclists to meet before or after a ride, just for this genius idea alone:  having a safe place to stow your bike while relaxing to have coffee, food, or beer. 

 

Also, if you want to train while you’re hanging out with friends, you can just hop onto Sal’s Sparkle Motion (named after a Donnie Darko reference: “Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!”).  Sparkle Motion is a stationary bicycle rigged up to motion picture box that will play a film if you are cycling with enough wattage.  It’s going to the movies the old-fashioned way, while toning your buns at the same time!     

 

The café also features a rotating photograph gallery.  Presently featured (until February 3, 2010) are abstract photos by Allan Ayres in a collection called “Composited Neighborhoods.”  These black-and-white pictures feature scenes from Bay Area cities, ideal for patrons enthusiastic about local photography. 

 

The cafe itself is loft-like with high ceilings, lots of windows, and yet it's warm and cozy at the same time.  I'm not sure how Sal managed to do that, but as with everything else, I'm sure it was carefully designed.

 

Lastly, as the manifesto will tell you, Actual Café uses “real china cups” instead of the “paper-sippy landfill multiplying ones.” They have comfortable furniture and communal seating, which consists of a long bar with stools on either side, a setup not only designed with group meetings in mind, it encourages strangers to talk with one another.  Now this is my kind of place! 

 

The Grand Opening was on Friday, January 8^th, and the place was teeming with at least a hundred people. Many rode their bicycles, as evidenced by the bicycle wall.  DJ Nik at was spinning a “beat which has a groove.”  Many of the attendees were other from the Oakland Yellow Jackets, a cycling club which meets every Saturday morning to embark upon a variety of challenging rides.  A fellow by the name of Tom Sepe, a “creative mastermind,” rode his homemade motorcycle that runs on propane and steam. (Unfortunately, he couldn’t bring that bike inside.) 

 

I spoke to many of the customers to get their impressions. The enthusiasm was overwhelming.  Many knew Sal before he began his café venture, and everyone was unanimous in agreeing how well the business plan was executed. “It appeared flawless,” Olvan Wilson told me. “It kept moving quite smoothly.” When I asked how he thought the place would fare in a neighborhood where a slough of condominiums were recently built, Olvan replied, “They have the vision and foresight to succeed. I believe they will do very well.”  I wholeheartedly agree.

 

In closing, I would just like to congratulate Sal and his Actual Café, and thank Chrissie Bartlett for the tip on the Grand Opening.  Somebody had to jolt me out of my recent writer’s block, and Actual Café did the trick.  I may actually have a new place to hang out at now, and I may actually begin writing again.

 

 

If you want to go: