July 6, 2007
Big Bear Cafe Opens Up Bloomingdale
Near sunset on a Tuesday in the middle of May, Lana Labermeier and her husband Stuart Davenport were sitting outside their then-unfinished new Bloomingdale coffee shop, Big Bear Cafe, enjoying a hard earned cold beer after a long day of landscaping work. Unfortunately, their neighbors could hardly let them rest.
"When are you gonna be open?" shouted one man from his car. "Are you hiring?" asked another. "What's this going to be?" "Aren't you open yet?" At least eight different people from the neighborhood stopped to inquire about the status of the cafe in the space of an hour. "It's like this all the time," Labermeier explained.
Officially launching tomorrow after a soft opening that began a few weeks ago, Big Bear has caused quite a stir since the day renovations began at its location at 1st and R Streets NW -- not so much because the couple has invented something brand new (it is a coffee shop after all) -- but because the largely residential Bloomingdale neighborhood (or Eckington, depending on who you ask around here) has apparently been starving for retail services for some time. Until recently, the only other businesses nearby were a few Chinese fast food restaurants, a liquor store, and the tiny Windows grocery store. Now that Big Bear is open and the brand new Bloomingdale Farmers' Market (also the brainchild of the couple, who live a few doors down from the cafe, and Davenport is the local ANC 5C03 commissioner) is running on Sundays across the street, suddenly other businesses are opening in the vicinity you might not have imagined would pop up here -- like The P Spot, a new fitness studio offering "strip aerobics" and more.
The mood surrounding the the birth of the new coffee shop seems to be infectious. Jody Clark, who lives around the corner and is working part-time at Big Bear, can be overheard telling curious new customers about how much she loves living in the area. "Until the coffee shop opened up I didn't know any of my neighbors," Clark said. "I only wanted to work here so I could finally meet people."
Big Bear Cafe is located at 1700 1st St. NW. Stop by on Saturday for their official opening day celebration, where there will be a pastry tasting with samples from Hawthorne Fine Breakfast Pastry at 10 a.m., and a single origin coffee tasting beginning at 2:30 p.m. Whole bean coffees and T-shirts will also be for sale.
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the big bear rocks!
Windows is a cafe as well as a bodega. and Soul Day Spa is just a block away. as is a good jamaican take out.
-sean in bloomingdale
Funny. By the name I'd assumed it would be a leather bar for 50-somethings and their cubs.
YUPPIES! GENTRIFICATION! &etc.
I like their floors.
best wishes for the owners of this establishment. the Post had an article about them, and how they worked with the neighborhood to open the business. let's everyone support them....
I'm hoping for the best, but given that Windows has been robbed at gunpoint at least three times in the last 18 months, I don't envy the owners of Big Bear. Bloomingdale is still the Wild West (er, East) in a lot of ways. But... its a great space and I wish them well.
well, we have managed to get stepped up police presence up here around windows (the police have to stop in and sign a log book every hour during operating hours), and things have been calm for about a month now. hopefully this is a streak we can keep going.
as far as the neighborhood name, it's bloomingdale. those eckingtonians across north cap are just jealous and want to take what's ours! if needs be, the great north capitol war of 2007 will commence, and i think we've got the troops on this side to overrun those fools over in northeast. (there are plenty of guys who hang around my place all day with nothing to do, so i think we could mobilize them for an attack).
:)
Went in today to check it out. It's good to have owner operated coffee shops. My complaint about DC coffee shops is that people don't seem to interact outside their own familiar "cells". They go "out" and take their laptops and do work that they should be doing at home. It's not the Parisian or Greenwich Village model of going out to meet friends and strangers and engage in ideas and rhetoric. DC would be so much more exciting and interestin' if that were the mode. Good luck "big bear".
chris lee
google search- christopherlee-artworldchrislee
Big Bear is a great improvement in Bloomingdale (and, I'm in agreement with IMGoph, ain't no Eckington west of North Cap).
I would be writing this comment from Big Bear if it wasn't too crowded when I stopped by a few hours ago. I'll take it as a good sign for the neighborhood that I had to get my coffee elsewhere.
Big Bear took its name from the coffee shop's previous incarnation. Before Sut and Lana bought the building it was a corner/liquor store frequented by drunks who loitered around outside for hours and harrassed passers by. It was called Big Bear Market.
It's a wonderful community meeting place as well as selling good coffee and pastries (still waiting for the sandwiches and salads) and I'm delighted that it's proving so popular (not least because I live less than a block away).
And the farmers market.... it's a community event each Sunday! I was skeptical that it would ever happen, but here it is and people are coming from all over the city to hang out.
Ha -- it is Bloomingdale, but in fact, it's also Eckington. (Bloomingdale south of Rhode Island is also the teeny part of Eckington that it is in Northwest. However, it is certainly not Shaw, is stated strangely by DC North.
Chris, when was the last time you were in a Greenwich Village coffee shop? I was in several this weekend and saw no strangers engaging in "rhetoric" and a lot of people working by themnselves on laptops. Pretty much what you find at any coffee shop in America these days.