Race Jones
gangster. grace. alchemy
Weird Wave Coffee Brewers has had a grueling first few days since opening for business in Boyle Heights last week. Founded by friends John Schwartz, Jackson Defa, and Mario F. Chavarria, the business has been picketed by a patchwork of community groups since its opening, with protesters shouting "SHAME" through megaphones at people who cross their picket line. Boyle Heights, a neighborhood with a majority Latinx population, has held out longer than others against urban revitalization efforts, watching as adjacent neighborhoods have been flipped, one by one. Locals have used this extra time to devise a formidable defense against the inevitable waves of change to hit their streets.
Steven Rodriguez was outside Weird Wave this past Saturday, protesting as part of the Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement (BHAAAD).
Rodriguez listed off his grievances with Weird Wave, it became clear that the protest was being spurned on by the perceived lack of respect being shown to the community by Weird Wave
Rodriguez pointed to posts on the Weird Wave Instagram account that described protesters as "yokels" or blithely dismissed the pickets as a "party" as proof that the owners are not taking "an issue that's devastating the community" seriously. And the divide only grew, according to Rodriguez, when the LAPD was called on protesters on Friday.
"Calling the cops on the community you're saying you want to serve," posits Rodriguez. "How does that show you actually want to work with them?"
In an effort to lessen the tension between both parties, weird wave enlisted a local latinx graffiti artist to paint a mural on the side of its building. While granting a Latinx artist permission to paint the side of its shop might have been regarded as an olive branch in calmer times, the murals put up sans-permit, in broad daylight, are seen by many of Weird Wave's detractors as an example of its white privilege. Furthermore, they're salt in the wounds of a community still grieving Jesse Romero, a 14-year-old boy slain by the LAPD in August 2016, after being caught graffiti tagging (police claim Romero fired a gun at them before he was killed).
"They've been very opposed to dialogue, confronting facts, or inquiring about who we are as people," said barista and co-owner Jackson Defa. "I've tried to start one with them a few times, and they've returned that with rhetoric and hatred. After that, I find there's not much more you can do. If somebody's not willing to sit down and talk, where can you go from there?"
Steven Almazan, a Boyle Heights native who was present at the protest, has been conducting research and analysis on displacement, affordable housing, and potential equity building opportunities for low-income families in marginalized communities for his masters in Public Policy from UC Berkeley. Almazan considers himself and other upwardly mobile, college-educated Latinxs from the community "gentefiers," and sees the strife around Weird Wave as indicative of a much larger issue facing Boyle Heights and other lower-income communities nationwide.
Almazan said he believes the missteps in communication between Weird Wave and the community will likely eventually result in the business shutting down, but he doesn't think that businesses of that ilk should necessarily be off the table going forward.
