New Works and Empire Coffee

As much as I love the Naked Lounge, and as often as I'm there, pestering the baristas for free muffins and scones, after years of pretty nearly the same interior there needs to be a bit of the mixing-up. And now there has been. Empire Coffee, over at the Chico Art Center, is ridiculously cute in its bright little traincar. According to the man who owns it--and is also the person serving your coffee--their coffee beans are the top 1% in the world, and they have something called Dagoba chocolate, which is apparently really high quality. Not to mention the original traincar booths and tables are still there, as well as a gorgeous chess board and a little shelf of neat reads [counting among them Dave Eggers, Michael Moore--everyone's favorite asshole--and David Sedaris, who deserves to be canonized].
It's definitely worth checking out, even if you're a Naked, Peet's, or Hasbeans die-hard.

In other matters, last night was the New Works exhibit at an apparently unnamed and unlabeled art gallery next to the El Rey theatre. The art was really fabulous, featuring local geniuses such as Dylan Tellesen and Max Infeld. My personal favorite work, however, was a painting titled "Francesca in Smoke." It was a woman's face, features and hair in black, drifting into a smoky black and brown background. It was ridiculously incredibly. If I had $820 I would have whipped it out of my pocket and bought it right then and there. I do not, however, have even enough money to buy a pack of gum, so I sufficed to merely look at it. [I think the painting was by Dean Hernandez, but I could be wrong].

I do not know the hours of this nameless art gallery, but I encourage you to find out and go check out some of the art if you haven't already. It's some of the best stuff I've seen in Chico.