Hold the Froth: Armenian-American Youth Revel in Café Culture

New California Media (San Francisco, CA)
(Reprinted from Asbarez Armenian Daily)
January 09, 2005

By Ishkhan Jinbashian

Hollywood might have its Little Armenia, but there’s no doubt that
Little Yerevan is by now firmly ensconced in what I like to call the
blessed city of Nagorno-Glendale.

Little Yerevan, and quite a bit of Little Tehran for sure. But
definitely not Little Beirut or Aleppo or Baghdad, as a good chunk of
the Western-Armenian contingent bolted years ago. As for the remnants,
sometimes it feels as though their glaring visibility more than makes up
for their diminishing numbers. Try Glendale watering holes like Sarkis
Pastry, Carousel Restaurant (a favorite with community movers and
shakers), or the editorial offices of Asbarez, and you’ll know what I mean.

What perhaps most palpably distinguishes Glendale’s sprawling Little
Yerevan from any number of cities with a large Armenian presence is its
kitschy ostentation. Here we don’t just drive late-model German and
Japanese cars, we insist on driving them extremely fast, wearing some
kind of determined malevolence as a badge of honor. And we don’t merely
put ululating rabiz music on in our apartments and souped-up road
machines; we make sure entire neighborhoods reverberate with the stuff.

Loud and obnoxious? You already gathered as much. Glad to suffer from a
pandemic case of narcissism? Yes, sir. And habitually confusing rudeness
with cool? Ditto.

Here’s a little clarification, before I get in too deep: The demographic
in question is between the ages of, say, 17 and 25, though to my
knowledge the next age bracket has so far shown no signs of significant
change.

Like one’s sun and rising signs, the youth is where the energies of a
community are at their most salient. And it’s where the cultural and
civic shape of things to come is molded (so help us God). In Little
Yerevan, you would be hard-pressed to ascribe a certain collective
character to the youth. By any standard, the young here seem to be a
normal bunch, despite a worrisome knack for white-collar and petty crime
in some quarters. But if you’re in the market for some naked sidewalk
truths based on casual observation, some signposts if you will, to gauge
the dynamic of the youth, then read on.

In Glendale today, by far the most public manifestation of Armenian
youth culture happens in coffee houses. And within the hierarchy of the
city’s cafés, no one has yet managed to dethrone La Goccia, Brand
Boulevard’s premier destination for ceremonious outdoor gathering. At La
Goccia, as throughout the city’s coffee houses (including some owned by
Armenians and the ubiquitous Starbuckses), Armenian dudes and dudettes
do what people the world over like doing in cafés: watch people, shoot
the breeze, court one another, catch up on gossip, watch people some
more, refill the spiritual batteries following the rigors of office or
school. But the vibe at La Goccia is in a league all its own.

Consider the location. On any given day or night, lounging around on the
massive sidewalk stretch that doubles as La Goccia’s patio, you’re sure
to be noticed from here to eternity–that is to say, from any vantage
point between Broadway and Wilson. You’ll be noticed by pedestrians. And
by people in the cars zooming through Brand. You’ll be plenty noticed by
other customers at the café. Plus, for the more romantically inclined
among us, La Goccia on clearer evenings is a wonderful spot for enjoying
the “magic hour,” that deep, achingly uniform blue that envelops the sky
right before the sun has finally set. But most importantly, La Goccia is
where you get pretty damn close to feeling something, at least
something, akin to a sense of community.

If this sounds a tad problematic, it’s because it is. As in any other
context, the sense of community experienced at a crowded Glendale café
can be fraught with provisos. For instance: you love the fact that a
throng of cappuccino sippers on either side of you happens to be of
Armenian descent. Yet you can get quickly annoyed by the impertinent and
lingering, sometimes lewd stares, the shouting that passes for benign
conversation, and the green house effect-inducing clouds of tobacco
smoke. You might also lure yourself into believing that a place like La
Goccia may well represent a microcosm of the Armenian world as we know
it. Yet such thoughts might quickly cede to the realization that that
microcosm has less and less space for anything Western-Armenian these
days, with entire dialects, literary and musical and theatrical
traditions dying off to our bemused helplessness, given the cultural
hegemony of Eastern-inflected Armenia.

This last point is thus very much the point of allowing that sense of
community to seep into you. Because La Goccia and similar coffee houses,
with their sheer volume of young Armenians teeming around you, may now
and again impel you to think about your own role in, and your own
position on, the larger patterns of our community.

Countless times I’ve caught myself vaguely musing on a smorgasbord of
questions, mostly rhetorical, while having business meetings or
tête-à-têtes with friends at La Goccia. Questions, in no particular
order, such as: How can we, as a community, be so industrious,
street-smart and resourceful, yet continue to be considerably lacking in
terms of artistic creativity–notwithstanding our output in the visual
arts? Why is it that I have yet to catch an Armenian youth engrossed in
a book (and not a textbook), at La Goccia or elsewhere in cafédom here
in Nagorno-Glendale? How come Armenian young men in general, who were
nurtured and reared by women (their mothers for Chrissake), end up
becoming misogynists of varying degrees? How does one explain the fact
that Hayastantsi guys, for all their unbending machismo, possess the
kind of mental athleticism that makes them so astonishingly witty? Are
we more like the Italians or the Jews? More “The Sopranos” or
“Seinfeld?” Why do so many Armenian young women unquestioningly
subscribe to mainstream conventions of desirability, allowing so much to
ride on physical appearance? Why do their male counterparts do the exact
same thing, only more damagingly? If young Armenians enjoy each other’s
company so much, why is it that they’re often gripped with panic by
Armenian-heavy stomping grounds, as though the plague were afoot? How is
this problem handled in Armenia, where compatriots are to be found
everywhere you look? Are the Armenians gathered at La Goccia ultimately
just another faceless crowd, or do these people have something
noteworthy to contribute to Glendale–something thoughtful, positive,
original, extraordinary even, in the spirit of building that’s supposed
to all but define us as a nation? And, all said, does anyone care about
any of this, when it’s time to go home because your friend has started
yawning like a debil and your bladder is about to burst as La Goccia has
no benefit of a restroom?

I’m inclined to say yes, absolutely, quite a few of us do care about
such matters – and then some. For one thing, Glendale is fast becoming
arguably the most important hub in the diaspora, and we better remember
that population growth has the danger of not automatically translating
to collective excellence. And also because rare is the Armenian
community, save the city of Yerevan, offering the kind of bustling café
culture that Glendale does, as both challenge and comfort.

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