By Jim Berg

Valley culture is often regarded as an oxymoron. It’s not that culture doesn’t exist in the Valley, it’s just that it’s regarded as being so inane as to be nonexistent. For many, the definitive statement on culture in the San Fernando Valley was made by Frank Zappa and daughter Moon Unit. The NoHo News is here to try to redefine Valley culture, and this particular issue is devoted to perhaps the greatest denizen of culture, the coffeehouse.

The three coffeehouses of the NoHo Arts District are the focus, but they are by no means the only coffee houses in the Valley. Insomnia in Sherman Oaks, the Cobalt Cafe in Woodland Hills and the Common Grounds in Northridge are three others that are shaping Valley culture, and there may be others that I’m not aware of.

What goes on in coffeehouses may seem strange to the uninitiated. A big part of what’s going on is exploration. A coffeehouse is a place to explore new ideas, be it in performance or conversation or writing or reading. Therefore by nature what is happening is often untried, imperfect, sometimes awkward and sometimes bad. But it also can be great, beautiful, moving and exciting. A certain amount of sophistication is required to appreciate the bad with the good.

In order to make the coffeehouse scene more accessible to the less sophisticated, I am introducing a regular column entitled “Speakeasy.” The purpose of Speakeasy is to inform readers about who’s who and what’s what on the coffeehouse scene and get the word out about some really good stuff that can be had.

On a different note, someone asked me, “NoHo? Is that a rip-off of Soho?” I cringed. Something is happening, and the epicenter of it is at Magnolia and Lankershim. What’s happening is not a “rip-off” and it’s unfortunate that it can be viewed in this way. I’m a native Californian and I’ve never been to Soho, and I’m not interested in making comparisons to Soho, New York or Soho, London or Melrose or any other place. A very real phenomenon that is completely beyond anyone’s control has been given the name NoHo, and for myself and this publication it has no reference to someplace or something else. NoHo is the name of a phenomenon, and that phenomenon is the result of a bunch of people who are simply doing their thing, be it painting, sculpting, acting, dancing, writing, or publishing a magazine.