Three Minutes With Andy Shallal
Andy Shallal is a restauranteur, antiwar activist, and artist. He opened Busboys & Poets, a cafe whose name pays tribute to the poetry of Langston Hughes, on the U Street Corridor in 2005.
When I arrived at Busboys & Poets to film Mr. Shallal, I learned that he was running a few minutes late and decided to kill some time in the cafe's bookstore. When Mr. Shallal arrived, he caught me reading Bill Cosby's controversial "wake-up" to the black community Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors. Embarrassed to be caught reading Mr. Cosby's embarrassing book, I tried to reshelve it, but could not find the section from whence it came. Mr. Shallal was gracious about the mix-up.
"Don't worry," Mr. Shallal said. "Just leave it on the counter."
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8:02 pm
We could really use a branch of Busboys and Poets in Silver Spring. NOT in the "new"(and much welcomed)Downtown Silver Spring, but in the Flower-Avenue-at-Piney-Branch-Road neigborhood. Although this area is a crossroads of economic classes, and very mixed ethnically, our neighborhood movie theatre has been dark for decades, we recently lost our wonderful, independent Piney Branch Hardware, and my wife tells me today that (at least temporarily) a tatoo parlor is using the space. Gentrification in a context of ethnic vitality is alive and well in Silver Spring, and it is very welcome here.