CICM: Nashville 2008

English lessons at Sudanese Community Center

Centennial Park of Nashville is not only a park of historical meaning, but a meaning to those who come here. To them, this is a place to relax, escape, and to spend time with family and friends. The meaning of this park to the people who come here is more than you will ever know.

Brent Cunningham

We produced a video and an audio story with a slideshow. Check em out!

Click To Play

by Lewis Brockus, Elizabeth Varin and Chelsea Accursi
California State University, Chico

A wooden door creaks open as customers enter a cafe, wipe their feet and get into line. The coffee grinder, milk steamer and a small blonde yelling orders make up most of the noise in the place, mixing with greetings between visitors and an alternative rock station playing in the background. People in line range from men in suits with briefcases to students with laptops, to a man in a lucha libre mask.

It’s 9 a.m., and it’s just a regular morning at Bongo Java, the eclectic coffee shop near Belmont University that will be celebrating its 15-year anniversary at the end of March.

The shop reflects its artistic neighborhood and clientele. Hand-painted tables fill the café, and local artists’ works adorn the walls. Groups congregate at larger tables to discuss a group project or a play they’re putting on. In the back, people sit alone with their laptops, working quietly and away from the crowd.

Even the name fits. One of the shop’s investors came up with Bongo Java to connect with the music scene and bohemian feel of coffee shops in the ’60s, said Bob Bernstein, owner of Bongo Java and three other eateries in Nashville.

Dubbed “too weird to franchise,” each place is built, designed and decorated to reflect the community it’s in. Fidos, just a few blocks away on 21st street, is more like a restaurant, with a bigger menu and slightly more expensive items.

Fifteen years ago, Bongo Java opened on a Sunday to a line out the door. In December 1996, the cafe got national media attention with a cinnamon bun that looked like Mother Teresa, christened the NunBun. Today, they are a neighborhood favorite and a second home for many.

Put simply by customer Amar Ali, people keep coming back to Bongo Java because “really, there is no better coffeehouse atmosphere or coffee in town.”