There are aspects of living on the Westside I can’t stand. I hate the traffic. I don’t know where to find good tacos. I can’t make local calls without first dialing 310. And then there’s a shortage of independent coffee houses.

I’m not a coffee drinker, but I like coffee houses. I get a lot more work done in a coffee house, but most of the places around here are chain coffee houses. Two Coffee Beans and four Starbucks within a two mile radius (and I was three short according to the Starbucks Store Locator!). I go to the Starbucks a ten minute walk away (sorry, Oso). Half the time I get some sort of hook up without even flirting with the baristas.

A few months ago, Alfred visited Antigua Cultural Coffee House after classes at Cal State LA. He left that day with a second part-time job as a barista. For the next few weeks Alfred insisted that I stop by his new workplace. I wanted to stop by, but Antigua is 15 miles away in El Sereno, an East LA neighborhood. Travelling 15 LA miles for coffee and free wi-fi wasn’t worth the headache.

I finally followed Alfred’s advice and set up a coffee date with Chispa. I don’t see her enough even though she’s back in LA. After her law school graduation she hit the books studying for the Bar exam and stayed away from any social events . By the time she was done with the bar in late July, I was busy or out of town (what’s new?). We kept missing each other, in both senses of the word.

On Wednesday after work, I picked Chispa up at her parent’s place and we made the short drive to Antigua. When we arrived, the small café was relatively empty except for a few students working on their laptops. I looked around at the place and knew exactly why Alfred had recommended the café. Each wall of the orange-ish room drew me in. Dark wooden tables were set up along the left wall and center of the room. A few comfy seats and a couch were positioned near the door and window. Opposite the window was a short hallway and a small room functioning as a mini-store of artesanía típica. Mayan glyphs in a stair-like design framed the glass display counter. The long left wall was empty except for a dollar pinned in the middle. To our right, Yancey, one of four co-owners exited the kitchen to greet us and take our order.

We approached and tried to figure out what to drink. The menu was a treat in itself. Antigua’s drink sizes wouldn’t confuse me. Ce, ome and yei are the Nahuatl words for one, two and three.

Choosing a drink was tough. Chispa chose the Aztlan Dream, white chocolate, espresso, vanilla and steamed milk. We both giggled when we read that it was white chocolate. I asked Yancey for a chai latté, but he told me they were out. “The UPS guy was supposed to deliver it today,” he told me.

I shook my head, “I should call my brother and have him put some pressure on his driver friends.”

I scanned the ice blends. They all were tempting. I settled on mango mainly because I wanted to ask for a Chango Mango (mango puree blended with ice). We asked for a banana nut muffin. “Do you want it warmed up? Cut in half?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I answered for the two of us.

While Yancey got our drinks ready we chatted. Lots of questions. Lots of answers. Does Alfred still work here? Who painted the glyphs and Nahuatl numbers (bars and dots)? Do you girls live around here? What do you do? Do you want to be on the mailing list?

He explained why there was only $1 tacked in the middle of the wall. “Look at that, I get all kinds of artists wanting to put there stuff up in here and a 16 year old kid uses it just to put a $1. I can’t wait for this month to end.” For September, Antigua would display art from an LA artist whose name I already forgot, but whose work I’ve seen. We found out that Yancey was a Cal State LA alum and was in MEChA as a student. He wanted to give back to the community and expand to Highland Park, a predominantly Latino neighborhood north of Downtown. Check, out the bathrooms, look around, he recommended. Before we paid, he asked us to sign up for the email list. We obliged.

We took our seats with our drinks and began the long process of catching up. I’m sure we could have gone all night. There’s never a shortage of news, chisme, problems to work out and work to explain. I find her immigration law work fascinating. She finds my drama more entertaining than a novela. It took us forever to eat our muffin as taking time to chew would have disrupted our flow. We took a while to finish our drinks, a sip here and there. They were great too.

Soon Antigua filled up. Students sat with their laptops and drinks across from us. A family with kids sat behind us and the folks who were in the place when we arrived were still lounging in their seats and at their tables, still typing away at their laptops. We decided to leave and give up our tables to newly arriving customers.

Before we left, I followed Yancey’s recommendation and checked out the women’s bathroom. The decor was different. Flowers bordered the ceiling and a quote by Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, graced the wall across from the toilet.

…instead of giving a rifle to somebody, build a school; instead of giving a rifle, build a community with adequate services. Instead of giving a rifle, develop an educational system that is not about conflict and violence, but one that promotes respect for values, for life, and respect for one’s elders. This requires a huge investment. Yet if we can invest in a different vision of peaceful coexistence, I think we can change the world, because every problem has a nonviolent answer (1996).

I left thinking of when I could escape the westside for some café/té y cultura. It’s rare that I can find a place that both inspires me and makes me feel at home.