“Angels come in here,” says Antoinette Alcazar, owner of the Edgewater coffee shop Last Kiss Cafe. “By angels, I mean people who are spiritual beings.” As if to illustrate her point, one of her regulars comes through the door holding a tiny plant she’s protecting from the cold. Another customer, an art therapist, donated the pastels that dot the cafe’s tables so patrons can sketch spontaneously. “For me, art is healing,” says Alcazar. “I work out my pains, my joys, my challenges, my doubts, my fears through art.”
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In support of this philosophy, she books live music at the cafe about three times a month. “I give whoever comes and asks an opportunity to play–though I’ve had more Latin American music,” she says. Every two months the cafe opens a new exhibit of visual art. Four times a year it collaborates on events with the Cuentos Foundation, a social service agency whose offices are across the street. And twice a month on Saturday mornings, Last Kiss offers free art workshops; recently participants made masks from milk cartons, paper plates, paper bags, boxes, yarn, leaves, twigs, and bottle caps.
After high school she joined the army, where she spent eight months on active duty at Fort Dix and three months in the reserves. Then she studied economics at UIC. She worked for a time for a venture capital firm in Boston, got married, and spent a few years in Stamford, Connecticut, where she lived, she says, “like one of the Stepford wives–a very superficial, very materialistic life.” In 1992, Alcazar and her family moved back to Chicago.
At 8 PM on Saturday, January 25, Last Kiss will host Argentinean guitarist Luis Jahn and poets Lito Barraza and Johanny Vasquez. On Friday, January 31, from 8 to 10 PM there’ll be an opening reception for “Cautivas,” an exhibit of paintings by fellow Chilean expat Fernando Gonzales; his subject matter is women held captive during the 1973 coup. The cafe is at 6326 N. Clark (773-381-5480). It’s open Monday through Thursday 8 AM to 9 PM, Friday and Saturday 8 AM to 11 PM.
