By Eduardo Rey Brummel
Roughly a decade ago, Salida Café was called by a Front Range newspaper, “Salida’s living room.” Certainly, this is true, for there’s a hint of mother hen in the air; and anyone walking in when Clark is there, is considered both friend and family. Robert Frost once said home is the place that when you go there, they have to take you in. And so it is, at Salida Café – but only if you change, “they have to take you in,” to, “they graciously take you in.”
For many folks, their first toe-hold in Salida is at the Café, and it is where they still consistently find the firmest footing. Like the Arkansas River, outside, beyond its back deck, so much life flows through here: birthday parties, recommitment of marriage vows, hearts shattered, hearts sutured, friendships and loves wedged apart and woven together again. More news, gossip, and business is conducted by inhabitants of these tables than anywhere else in town – perhaps even more than all other places, combined. There’s also live music and open-mic, and I dare anyone to walk into the Café on one of those nights, and say it’s not our community’s family in the room.
“… they graciously take you in.” What most endears Salida Café to me is its vocation. Society needs the oddballs and the misfits, the colors outside the lines; and the Café provides a place for us – on both sides of the counter. Whether you inhabit a slightly different plane of the universe, simply need temporary shelter through you current storm, or even if you have it all together, pull up a chair or tie on an apron. I bet they find an empty niche that’s just your size.
Eduardo Rey Brummel will love Salida Café forever because they rescued him from the continuing clutches of Highway 50 BurgerLand employment.