LA PALOMA SABANERA
it closes tomorrow. i didn't know about that until i read this story. i SHOULD have seen it coming.
my office was just down the street from la paloma. however, we moved from hartford to windsor and i've not been in the old hood in a bit.
if you can, why don't you stop and say goodbye (AND more importantly THANK YOU)
By SUSAN CAMPBELL Courant Staff Writer
La Paloma Sabanera, which closes Friday, was a lot of things, but it was never your regular coffeehouse/bookstore.It wasn't that the staff — led by affable co-owner Luis Edgardo Cotto — knew your favorite coffee. Nor was it the public art that decorated the walls inside and out, or the jazz concerts, movie nights, poetry readings and open mikes.La Paloma — ironically, named for an endangered pigeon found in Puerto Rico — was one of the few places in Hartford — maybe in all of Connecticut — where the clientele was mixed. Opened in mid-2004 by the Cottos — Luis and his sisters, Carmen, Cinthia, Leticia and Melanie — the small shop was home to neighborhood children doing homework in the lending library upstairs, city activists intent on changing the status quo, city politicos intent on preserving it, and a rabble of others who found the Yauco Selecto coffee strong, the music bracing and the company challenging.....
picture: LA PALOMA SABANERA owner Luis Cotto (center, in T-shirt), says goodbye to, from left, Glenn Geathers, state Rep. Kevin Roldan and Jose Rodriguez. (SHANA SURECK / December 24, 2007)
