Now More Than Ever: A Great Good Place
July 19, 2007
By Rachel Leigh Mays
Like everything else it does, Fair Grinds Coffeehouse, Mid-City’s fair trade coffeehouse/community center, has avenged Katrina on its own terms and with the gentle principles that guide it. Although the storm dealt them an unfair hand, owners Robert and Elizabeth Thompson can reel off countless stories of what they consider their real success long before the Ponce de Leon establishment was ever officially reopened in June of this year.
As two of the handful of people who returned immediately after the storm, the Thompsons recall the dark, still, calm-after-the-storm days as those that mean the most to them. Upon returning to the Big Easy from Houston in the fall of 2005, the Thompsons found their former haven transformed into what seemed would be a never-ending nightmare of reconstruction and starting over.
It wasn’t long however, before the waterlogged space once again began to form the backdrop for one fascinating story after another of goodwill and generosity. Robert gave up on keeping a list of all of the people who volunteered their services from carpentry to clean-up crews after it surpassed 4 typed pages of names.
As Robert recounts, the first few months were very intense as they were the only place “open” in Mid-City. The National Guard would visit and bring food, while a couple of FEMA contractors brought a BBQ kit to serve up New Orleans style BBQ for up to fifty lonely, abandoned, and desolate people.
Since Fair Grinds had an electric water heater, people came to the coffeehouse for their hot shower—not to mention free coffee and wi-fi. They also received milk and sugar donations from Verizon and Bell South groups of volunteers. As everyone was on a waiting list for a refrigerator and Fair Grinds has an ice-machine, Robert and Elizabeth also gave out bags of ice.
For the Thompsons, Katrina was a lesson in humility. Robert still tears up when he recalls an elderly Italian lady he’d always seen pushing her little European-style cart to and fro the corner grocery store, unwilling to relinquish her independence and self-reliance to old age. She stayed during the entire storm. He recognized her when she came to him one day begging for ice. So fiercely independent, she insisted they take her two dollars.
“Taking her two dollars was a matter of respect for her self-reliance,” says Robert. “She was an icon of survivability, but ultimately when it came down to the magnitude of the situation, we had to learn the art of graciously accepting the help of others.”
Fair Grinds served as a referral for people seeking help of many sorts bringing FEMA to designate the coffeehouse-gone-Grassroots Community Center as a daily drop-off of food and updates otherwise unavailable. Scads of donated goods arrived at the coffeehouse daily. Word got out that people could come to Fair Grinds for just about everything listed under Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: food, water, love, clothes, shelter, and more.
Aware of fragile mental conditions, the Thompsons wasted no time in setting up AA and NA meetings and Holistic healing counseling in the community room upstairs. Musicians began frequenting Fair Grinds to fill the silent nights and provide therapeutic tunes for the many seeking solace and smiles in the turbulent aftermath.
One evening Loyola professor, uptown resident and singer/songwriter, Mark Fernandez, arrived guitar in hand and asked if he could play “until things got better”. Mark played through those desolate days, lifting spirits, and healing through his music. The musicians who he brought with him continue to play today and include Tom Maron, a singer/song-writer with styles from Celtic, country, eclectic fiddle, guitar, harmonica, toe-tapping jigs—accompanied by a singing dog.
According to Robert and Elizabeth, the real success after the storm was in the relationships born and a flux of a thousand friends, maintaining mental health, creating a nexus for people to come meet, rehabilitate, network, and simply be with people. The idea of reopening only seemed important upon seeing the renovation and thus feeling obligated to get the business off the ground as a show of thanks for the level of community participation that brought everyone so far.
Through hell and high water, Fair Grinds has remained true to its vision, to borrow sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s term, of creating a “Great Good Place” that “allows people to relax and unwind, encourage sociability instead of isolation, and make life more colorful and enriched.”
Today, Fair Grinds has a revolving door of loyal customers and newcomers alike who can’t help but want to be a regular. Lawrence Gobble, one of the fortunate few who has worked at Fair Grinds since Katrina, stated, “I love working here; the people are always different, always, changing, and always the same.”
Fair Grinds Coffeehouse
3133 Ponce de Leon
New Orleans, LA 70119
Open 6:30AM to 10PM daily
(504) 913-9072
E-mail