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Hold the Froth: Armenian-American Youth Revel in Cafe Culture

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  • Hold the Froth: Armenian-American Youth Revel in Cafe Culture

    Hold the Froth: Armenian-American Youth Revel in Café Culture

    New California Media (San Francisco, CA)
    (Reprinted from Asbarez Armenian Daily)
    January 09, 2005

    By Ishkhan Jinbashian

    Hollywood might have its Little Armenia, but there's no doubt that
    Little Yerevan is by now firmly ensconced in what I like to call the
    blessed city of Nagorno-Glendale.

    Little Yerevan, and quite a bit of Little Tehran for sure. But
    definitely not Little Beirut or Aleppo or Baghdad, as a good chunk of
    the Western-Armenian contingent bolted years ago. As for the remnants,
    sometimes it feels as though their glaring visibility more than makes up
    for their diminishing numbers. Try Glendale watering holes like Sarkis
    Pastry, Carousel Restaurant (a favorite with community movers and
    shakers), or the editorial offices of Asbarez, and you'll know what I mean.

    What perhaps most palpably distinguishes Glendale's sprawling Little
    Yerevan from any number of cities with a large Armenian presence is its
    kitschy ostentation. Here we don't just drive late-model German and
    Japanese cars, we insist on driving them extremely fast, wearing some
    kind of determined malevolence as a badge of honor. And we don't merely
    put ululating rabiz music on in our apartments and souped-up road
    machines; we make sure entire neighborhoods reverberate with the stuff.

    Loud and obnoxious? You already gathered as much. Glad to suffer from a
    pandemic case of narcissism? Yes, sir. And habitually confusing rudeness
    with cool? Ditto.

    Here's a little clarification, before I get in too deep: The demographic
    in question is between the ages of, say, 17 and 25, though to my
    knowledge the next age bracket has so far shown no signs of significant
    change.

    Like one's sun and rising signs, the youth is where the energies of a
    community are at their most salient. And it's where the cultural and
    civic shape of things to come is molded (so help us God). In Little
    Yerevan, you would be hard-pressed to ascribe a certain collective
    character to the youth. By any standard, the young here seem to be a
    normal bunch, despite a worrisome knack for white-collar and petty crime
    in some quarters. But if you're in the market for some naked sidewalk
    truths based on casual observation, some signposts if you will, to gauge
    the dynamic of the youth, then read on.

    In Glendale today, by far the most public manifestation of Armenian
    youth culture happens in coffee houses. And within the hierarchy of the
    city's cafés, no one has yet managed to dethrone La Goccia, Brand
    Boulevard's premier destination for ceremonious outdoor gathering. At La
    Goccia, as throughout the city's coffee houses (including some owned by
    Armenians and the ubiquitous Starbuckses), Armenian dudes and dudettes
    do what people the world over like doing in cafés: watch people, shoot
    the breeze, court one another, catch up on gossip, watch people some
    more, refill the spiritual batteries following the rigors of office or
    school. But the vibe at La Goccia is in a league all its own.

    Consider the location. On any given day or night, lounging around on the
    massive sidewalk stretch that doubles as La Goccia's patio, you're sure
    to be noticed from here to eternity--that is to say, from any vantage
    point between Broadway and Wilson. You'll be noticed by pedestrians. And
    by people in the cars zooming through Brand. You'll be plenty noticed by
    other customers at the café. Plus, for the more romantically inclined
    among us, La Goccia on clearer evenings is a wonderful spot for enjoying
    the "magic hour," that deep, achingly uniform blue that envelops the sky
    right before the sun has finally set. But most importantly, La Goccia is
    where you get pretty damn close to feeling something, at least
    something, akin to a sense of community.

    If this sounds a tad problematic, it's because it is. As in any other
    context, the sense of community experienced at a crowded Glendale café
    can be fraught with provisos. For instance: you love the fact that a
    throng of cappuccino sippers on either side of you happens to be of
    Armenian descent. Yet you can get quickly annoyed by the impertinent and
    lingering, sometimes lewd stares, the shouting that passes for benign
    conversation, and the green house effect-inducing clouds of tobacco
    smoke. You might also lure yourself into believing that a place like La
    Goccia may well represent a microcosm of the Armenian world as we know
    it. Yet such thoughts might quickly cede to the realization that that
    microcosm has less and less space for anything Western-Armenian these
    days, with entire dialects, literary and musical and theatrical
    traditions dying off to our bemused helplessness, given the cultural
    hegemony of Eastern-inflected Armenia.

    This last point is thus very much the point of allowing that sense of
    community to seep into you. Because La Goccia and similar coffee houses,
    with their sheer volume of young Armenians teeming around you, may now
    and again impel you to think about your own role in, and your own
    position on, the larger patterns of our community.

    Countless times I've caught myself vaguely musing on a smorgasbord of
    questions, mostly rhetorical, while having business meetings or
    tête-à-têtes with friends at La Goccia. Questions, in no particular
    order, such as: How can we, as a community, be so industrious,
    street-smart and resourceful, yet continue to be considerably lacking in
    terms of artistic creativity--notwithstanding our output in the visual
    arts? Why is it that I have yet to catch an Armenian youth engrossed in
    a book (and not a textbook), at La Goccia or elsewhere in cafédom here
    in Nagorno-Glendale? How come Armenian young men in general, who were
    nurtured and reared by women (their mothers for Chrissake), end up
    becoming misogynists of varying degrees? How does one explain the fact
    that Hayastantsi guys, for all their unbending machismo, possess the
    kind of mental athleticism that makes them so astonishingly witty? Are
    we more like the Italians or the Jews? More "The Sopranos" or
    "Seinfeld?" Why do so many Armenian young women unquestioningly
    subscribe to mainstream conventions of desirability, allowing so much to
    ride on physical appearance? Why do their male counterparts do the exact
    same thing, only more damagingly? If young Armenians enjoy each other's
    company so much, why is it that they're often gripped with panic by
    Armenian-heavy stomping grounds, as though the plague were afoot? How is
    this problem handled in Armenia, where compatriots are to be found
    everywhere you look? Are the Armenians gathered at La Goccia ultimately
    just another faceless crowd, or do these people have something
    noteworthy to contribute to Glendale--something thoughtful, positive,
    original, extraordinary even, in the spirit of building that's supposed
    to all but define us as a nation? And, all said, does anyone care about
    any of this, when it's time to go home because your friend has started
    yawning like a debil and your bladder is about to burst as La Goccia has
    no benefit of a restroom?

    I'm inclined to say yes, absolutely, quite a few of us do care about
    such matters - and then some. For one thing, Glendale is fast becoming
    arguably the most important hub in the diaspora, and we better remember
    that population growth has the danger of not automatically translating
    to collective excellence. And also because rare is the Armenian
    community, save the city of Yerevan, offering the kind of bustling café
    culture that Glendale does, as both challenge and comfort.

    NCM Online is sponsored by Pacific News Service in collaboration with
    the Chinese American Voter Education Committee


    http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id-28f5b304f469cec442af7dd3939fcd
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