Over four years, 1951 Coffee has trained 225 refugees from 29 countries, and aims to educate its customers about the challenges refugees and asylees face in seeking, attaining and sustaining employment while adapting to their new homes. Photo (from 2017): Angelica Ekeke
2410 Channing Way (between Dana Street and Telegraph Avenue), Berkeley
Four years ago, in January 2017, just days after Berkeley’s 1951 Coffee Company opened its Channing Avenue cafe staffed entirely by refugees, President Trump enacted his travel ban barring immigrants and refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries and suspending the entire refugee resettlement program. Doug Hewitt, 1951 Coffee’s co-founder and CEO, recognized a bright side to that calamitous decision.
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Photo: Dibsy Machta Photo: Anna Mindess
Every day since March 17 when the shelter in place orders were instituted, Dibsy Machta has decorated her front door at 808 Shattuck Ave. with colorful construction paper cut-outs. The messages urge her Berkeley neighbors to stay safe. They also tally up the grim numbers of COVID-19 deaths both in the US and worldwide. To mark the number of days we have been in lockdown, Matcha has incorporated Roman numerals, scientific numbers and prime numbers. She’s used playing cards, dice and egg cartons.
One might assume Machta is a furloughed math teacher with a huge supply of materials leftover from classroom bulletin boards. But actually she is a retired medical office manager who now sees how her hoarding tendencies have come in handy.
Takara Sake’s virtual tasting sessions are held over Zoom, but attendees get five bottles to sample at home during the one-hour class. Photo: Anna Mindess
In the good old days, sigh, when my husband and I would go out to Japanese restaurants, like Kamado Sushi, Kiku Sushi or Sushi California in Berkeley, we would always order a bottle of cold sake to drink with our meal. We would ask the servers for suggestions (“not too dry, not too sweet”), and they would bring something that we usually liked, but, somehow, we never made a note of its name. (At Kamado, the sake is served in an elegant glass decanter with a pocket for ice, so we didn’t even see the bottle). I always told myself that,