Night of the Armando

I’m the last guy in the world to spot a trend, due to a resistant nature that won’t let me do what everyone else is doing. I don’t read the best-seller list, I don’t drink Evian water and I was probably the only living person in L. A. who didn’t watch the last episode of “Dallas.”

I take the back roads most of the time rather than the cultural freeways, and as a result I’m out there wandering aimlessly while the captains of hip are already where the action is.

I only recently ate at Spago in the Land of Celebrities, and didn’t like it. The place is too crowded and noisy and I don’t even recognize most movie stars. I did spot Jerry Brown, but that’s not like seeing someone really famous.

Anyhow, Spago is probably no longer the place to go, so I was too late as usual to be part of What’s Going On. You don’t get a lot of Spagos on the back roads.

I may also be too late to predict a return of the Coffeehouse Era in the City of Angles, but I’m going to do it anyhow. Espresso is in, a little white wine out.

It all began when Cinelli, which is to say my wife, looked at me one day and said, “We never go anywhere trendy.”

She was reading our View section at the time, which always has a lot of What’s Happening in it. I reminded her she didn’t like trendy and she said, “That’s not the point.”

I waited to hear what the point was, but she went back to reading, no doubt having decided I probably wouldn’t get it anyhow.

Just about then a man I know named Fred Starner called and said I ought to check out the coffeehouses in town, they’re coming back. Fred’s a folk singer who used to do stuff with Pete Seeger, the folk singer’s folk singer.

He’s one of those likable, easy-going guys who mumbles a lot and writes tunes like “Talkin’ Police Blues”: “In L. A. on a clear day you can hear the sirens, and black men sobbin’ as the nightsticks are bobbin’ . . . .”

You can’t dance to it, but what the hell.

Cinelli and I used to hit the coffeehouses in San Francisco’s North Beach a lifetime and a half ago when the nights were shrouded in fog and the bluesy sound of an alto sax could make you think the whole world was crying.

Then they seemed to go out of existence everywhere at once, but we’re coming full circle on everything, so why not coffeehouses?

There are maybe a dozen in L. A. now and more opening all the time. We caught Starner in both the Congo Plaza in Santa Monica and the Cobalt Cafe in Woodland Hills, like aging groupies sniffin’ after a guitar-strumming icon.

He was doubling with Larry Penn, who is said to be Seeger’s favorite folk singer. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Mike Antonovich often claims to be God’s best friend on the Board of Supervisors, but no one’s likely to call God or Pete Seeger to check them out.

The Congo and the Cobalt are OK places, with posters on the wall, cappuccino on the tables and love in the air. By love I mean love among the peoples of the world, the way Wendell Wilkie envisioned it.

Folk singing hasn’t--I mean ain’t--changed much over the years. They’re still singing in bad grammar about peace, boll weevils, union labor and little boxes on the hillside.

The coffeehouses are filled with young people in cotton and denim, whose daddies probably told them what to wear to places like that. They liked the political folk tunes best, but “Grandma’s Quilt” got a nice hand too. Even coffeehouse liberals love granny.

The Iguana in North Hollywood appealed most. It’s a working-class coffeehouse with real books on its shelves, psychedelic posters on the wall and tie-dyed T-shirts for sale.

They don’t serve espresso or cappuccino because the machines to make them cost too much. You get regular coffee or tea mixed with music and poetry and maybe a game of chess.

Tom Ianniello, also known as Ino, owns the place. He’s bearded, long-haired and short, giving the impression of a woodland elf sliding between tables. He named the place after a pet iguana called Armando.

Ino says he called his coffeehouse the Iguana because he doubted anyone would go to a place named the Armando.

A warm wind was blowing when we dropped by after midnight. A band called Rabbit Choir was playing. It had two guitars, drums and a flute, and it was the flute that sent me flying back to the misty nights up north.

“At last,” Cinelli said, settling back with a cup of steaming herbal tea. “Trend.”

I’m not all that sure coffeehouses are still trendy. I may once more be on the downside of hip. But, like Jimmy crackin’ corn, I don’t care. The Iguana has the back-road kind of feel I like, and I’ll swing by again sometime when sadness rides the sound of a flute, and a warm wind is blowing the stars around.