Their Own Private Iowa: Iowa Cafe fast becoming a haven for all types of artists

Kimberley McGee

Monday, April 1, 2002 | 8:18 a.m.

After a recent acoustic guitar set at Iowa Cafe, a customer pushed past the teetering tables and wooden chairs to the lunch counter to ask for the singer's CD.

With slumped shoulders, activities director Renee Christy replied that she had already sold out of copies for the weekend night.

The customer pledged to return the following Saturday for the CD and more commenting that there aren't many places to find local acoustic artists and their compilations.

That perked up Christy.

"What we'd like to see happen is to make this a real arts district," Christy said. "It has to start somewhere, why not here?"

Iowa Cafe is a narrow, creme-colored room in downtown Las Vegas, across the street from the Arts Factory. Because of its close proximity to what is considered the city's arts corridor, the owners of the cafe are reaching out to area artists, Christy said.

"They (Las Vegas politicians) talk about having an arts district," Christy said. "We're trying to give it a chance."

The restaurant caters to the shirt-and-tie lunch crowd every day from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. From 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. the cafe becomes a stage for artists to share their crafts with the world or at least the city. Each night is chock-full of activities to entice valley residents.

"We are open to anything," Christy said.

Mondays are open-mike nights. Tuesdays are reserved for local poets who casually share their angst. Wednesdays the tabletops are filled with Scrabble boards, backgammon and old-fashioned board games.

On Thursday nights poets compete to enter a national poetry championship that will take place in August in Minnesota.

Jazz and classic guitarists play during the cafe's Friday Hideaway theme night from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Jazz singer/songwriter Tim Torgerson and classical guitarist Kenneth Taylor host the drive-time downtime for commuters who can't face one more rush hour.

"This is a place to come and get a piece of what's happening in Las Vegas before you face the traffic," Christy said.

Don't assume Iowa Cafe's name is its focus.

"We are all about community," Christy said. "We aren't about Iowa."

Las Vegas developers Paul Kellogg and David Shaffer bought the block holding the former glass-fronted Lee's office building in 1997.

Iowa Cafe was first a luncheonette in 1998, catering to the area's budding population of attorneys. It slowly became an outlet for artists at the Arts Factory.

The cafe is the anchor for the group of buildings at 300 E. Charleston Blvd. that Shaffer, Kellogg and their developer partners renovated in 1998. They primped and primed the '50s-era buildings to house businesses as part of the downtown revitalization efforts.

"This was part of the Aquarius Plaza (office space) redevelopment originally," said Shaffer, who brokers large commercial real-estate deals while delivering sandwiches as Iowa Cafe's popularity rises. "It's becoming much more than that."

Kellogg's 100-year-old family farm in Iowa is featured in photos on the walls of the cafe. Outside the nondescript office building is a wall mural by Kellogg, a part-time painter who dabbles in serious art while closing real- estate deals.

"We are looking to add more to this plaza in a cultural sense," Shaffer said. "An art community thrives on sponsorship. A lot of these artists that come to us can't afford to rent so we provide space to meet, write, read poetry. It's a space for exposure."

Speak easy

On a recent evening at the cafe an enclave of artists performed for audience members, who came to sip coffee and dip into a corner of the city's cultural pool.

The brevity of past cultural cafes such as Enigma on 4th Street and Copioh on Maryland Parkway (which closed last year despite a robust clientele) is a sad comment on the Las Vegas art scene, Seth "Flynn" Barkan, a Las Vegas poet, said.

"There's a closed sense to a lot of cafes in Las Vegas," Barkan, a 21-year-old local native, said. "But it's getting better. We need 15 more Iowa Cafes because they are ridiculously event-driven. There's always something happening there."

There is a thriving poetry community in Las Vegas, Barkan said, but it's fragmented in academic pockets around the valley.

Iowa Cafe and other cultural outlets, such as Jitters locations around the valley and Cafe Espresso Roma on Maryland Parkway, along with area libraries, offer a place for poets to test shaky rough drafts or sell their tomes, Barkan said.

"There is an insane amount of support for poetry in Las Vegas," Barkan said, "just not a lot of open places to hear it."

Las Vegas poet Terry Poot came to Las Vegas two years ago from Kansas. In the past few years he has watched as the circle of poets has grown.

"I love to watch poetry performed," Poot said. "It comes alive in a way that you just can't read it. Some of the local poets are amazing in the emotion they can get across in a reading."

The readings and acoustical music sets drew Karen and Rory Wright to the small cafe.

"I had no idea there was so much going on in such a tiny place," said Karen Wright, who has lived in Las Vegas with her husband, Rory, since 1998.

The couple heard about Iowa Cafe while online a few months ago. After tasting the homemade Greek salad and chicken breast sandwich with avocado, the couple returned for the Saturday-night acoustic scene.

"It has a coffee-shop feel and good food that's not expensive," Karen Wright said. "We were having a hard time meeting people in Las Vegas."

"We were looking for that community-coffee shop, comfortable feeling," Rory Wright said. "At Barnes & Noble or some of the other places there's no interaction. You just sit there and drink your coffee and go home."

Howard Solomon, a Las Vegas Realtor, regularly stops into Iowa Cafe for a cup of coffee and to catch whatever entertainment is on tap.

"It's hard to find a place in Las Vegas where you can bring friends and there isn't drinking, gambling, smoking, but community," Solomon, a five-year resident, said. "This is our community right here."

Saturdays at Iowa Cafe are reserved for the Women's Showcase, an acoustic evening featuring area female artists. The event was a surprise to recent transplant and singer Yvonne Ramage.

Ramage, 36, worked in New York, Washington, D.C., and San Diego before moving to Seattle to further her singing career. She moved to Las Vegas from Seattle six months ago at the suggestion of a friend who relished the valley's music scene.

"He said there was a budding acoustic scene down here," Ramage said. "I expected to hear a lot of cover tunes but there's a nice surge of original music here."

Iowa Cafe has turned out artists whose caliber is impressive, she said.

"People are really dedicated to their art and making it work here," Ramage said. "There's something happening here."

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