The Blue Dahlia Wilts
By PHILIP ANSELMO
Messenger Post Staff
Posted: Jun 4, 01:00 PM EDT
The trouble with running a coffeehouse is that you have to sell coffee.
Poets, folk singers and hipsters lament as Main Street puts another cultural couch on the curb. The Blue Dahlia cafe has served up its last latte.
For nearly two years, Blue Dahlia was the open-mic mecca in Canandaigua. "Our customers," said Scott Mackey, one of three co-owners, "we'll miss them."
Marie Starr saw Blue Dahlia as her local joint, the place she could read her poetry, or listen to a fiddle without having to make the trek to Rochester.
The place closed up two weeks ago, but its fate was sealed months before.
"Winter was really hard," said Starr. From behind the glass-front, stalwarts watched the foot traffic on South Main diminish. Even in the balmy months, the cash register didn't exactly ring every minute. On those cold nights, hours seemed to go by without a sale being rung up. And coffee was the main revenue stream, apart from a few crafts gifts. Money that the performers pulled in — tips — walked out the door in their jeans.
But there were plenty of cars as the regulars watched "drive-thru" citizens make their way down Main to Routes 5 and 20 and its big-box retailers and chains with parking lots, rather than parking spaces, and in-your-car service rather than on-the-couch comfort.
"The merchants downtown need the support of the people," said Mackey. "We really need that local support."
Right now, all seems gloomy. Sue Wierzbowski, co-owner of Phoenix Coffee on North Main, sees what amounts to a reverse trickle-down effect, with Blue Dahlia as one of its victims.
"It's a very tough economic situation, and Rochester is not doing well," said Wierzbowski. With Eastman Kodak Co. and Bausch & Lomb Inc. laying off so many people, "there's a big ripple effect. When you have big businesses doing poorly, the small businesses do poorly."
So what would have kept the beans grinding and the poets rhyming? Quite simply, more rings on the cash register, said Mackey.
"It just wasn't producing enough income to keep it afloat," he said. "We didn't want to close it, but in the end, it was a financial situation."
Not that the cafe didn't try to figure out what its customers wanted. Works from local artists steadily took over wall space from the 1950s' film-noir memorabilia. Writing clubs, knitting circles and reading groups held forth on the couches, and teen slam poets even came to rehearse for their gig in Brooklyn.
Blue Dahlia tried out everything it could to bring in bodies to bring in the bucks. But in the end, art just doesn't pay the bills, and trying to keep the place alive just wasn't worth it. "It got to the point where we burned out on it," said Mackey.
The irony of the situation was that, without crowds of customers and their noise, the venue was perfect for intimate performances for folksy acoustic groups such as The Instruments.
For their shows at the cafe, the band pulled the couches right up to the stage, which itself was no more than a few square yards.
"We do a lot of audience participation," said the group's guitarist, Blake Cooper. "We have them clap along or sing. There was no separation between us and them."
In short, it was a cozy little joint.
"Open mic lets you learn so much," said Starr. "You're not limited by class or geography. It's so much more accessible, more grassroots."
It was the only place around where Starr could order a Casablanca — "a very sweet frozen caramel coffee with chocolate sauce" — while she admired the textures of a soft pastel piece by artist Gretchen Lee, and her four-year-old son, Ayden, sang without music and danced without a beat.
One night, Ayden was the featured artist, which meant 20 minutes of stage time. With poets on the floor and on the couches blowing into their lattes to cool them off, the boy set up his drum circle of pots and pans and noisemakers.
That night wasn't the first time people tapped their feet, clapped and sang along. But it did turn out to be one of the last.
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