On the menu at Busboys and Poets, interwoven between the lists of tea (chamomile or chai?) and sides (collard greens or sweet potato fries?), are philosophical bits from writers and philosophers and poets, including Camus— “Peace is the only battle worth waging”—and Benito Juarez—“El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.” On the walls, sketches of the Apollo Theatre and Lenox Avenue recall the Harlem Renaissance, and quotes inspire—“Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly”—and provoke—“Art is dangerous.”
The place is full of conversation, even during a weekday lunch, and people are encouraged to sit at community tables to meet and discuss art and politics. But it is not only this atmosphere of open exchange and progressive thinking that draws me here: it is the menu – which, actually, is an extension of its philosophy. It includes free-range, locally-raised, grass-fed beef from Grayson Farm (the burger is great), and local greens from a place called Community Offshoots Farm Network (how can a place with a name like that be anything but good), and there are loads of vegan selections and gluten free beer and sustainable seafood and fair trade, organic coffees and teas. Even the cleaning products here are eco-friendly, and the restaurant uses 100 percent renewable wind energy, recycles its cooking oil for biofuel, and turns all the profits at the attached Busboys book store back to Teaching for Change, which runs that portion of the enterprise. On the entertainment side, there are open mic sessions, films, book signings and poetry readings.
Sitting in the midst of all this intellectual activity reminds me of my younger self, passionate about justice and art and ideas. That sort of open, full-throttle and, yes, youthful embrace of the world tends to fade in the workaday life of the middle aged. A trip to Busboys and Poets is just the thing to goose me back into awareness.
One of the reasons it works, I believe, is that it is not force-fed to me, like a prophet on the street corner. All of these ideas and poems and artworks are folded into the fabric of an everyday activity: eating.
My favorite example: this poem, printed in the menu between a notice about Free WiFi and the list of other Busboys and Poets locations: It is from the restaurant’s namesake, Langston Hughes, who placed a handful of poems on the table of poet Nicholas Vachel Lindsay one night at the Wardman Park Hotel where he bused tables in the early 1920s and thus earned the moniker, “a Negro busboy poet.” It hits me like a prayer:
Let America be America again
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain,
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(American never was America to me)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed –
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me) …
The place is full of conversation, even during a weekday lunch, and people are encouraged to sit at community tables to meet and discuss art and politics. But it is not only this atmosphere of open exchange and progressive thinking that draws me here: it is the menu – which, actually, is an extension of its philosophy. It includes free-range, locally-raised, grass-fed beef from Grayson Farm (the burger is great), and local greens from a place called Community Offshoots Farm Network (how can a place with a name like that be anything but good), and there are loads of vegan selections and gluten free beer and sustainable seafood and fair trade, organic coffees and teas. Even the cleaning products here are eco-friendly, and the restaurant uses 100 percent renewable wind energy, recycles its cooking oil for biofuel, and turns all the profits at the attached Busboys book store back to Teaching for Change, which runs that portion of the enterprise. On the entertainment side, there are open mic sessions, films, book signings and poetry readings.
Sitting in the midst of all this intellectual activity reminds me of my younger self, passionate about justice and art and ideas. That sort of open, full-throttle and, yes, youthful embrace of the world tends to fade in the workaday life of the middle aged. A trip to Busboys and Poets is just the thing to goose me back into awareness.
One of the reasons it works, I believe, is that it is not force-fed to me, like a prophet on the street corner. All of these ideas and poems and artworks are folded into the fabric of an everyday activity: eating.
My favorite example: this poem, printed in the menu between a notice about Free WiFi and the list of other Busboys and Poets locations: It is from the restaurant’s namesake, Langston Hughes, who placed a handful of poems on the table of poet Nicholas Vachel Lindsay one night at the Wardman Park Hotel where he bused tables in the early 1920s and thus earned the moniker, “a Negro busboy poet.” It hits me like a prayer:
Let America be America again
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain,
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(American never was America to me)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed –
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me) …
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