THE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH

This week’s News to Us dealt with “Gentrification in Allston” and an “exorbitant rent increase” forcing local businesses out of our beloved neighborhood. The same day the piece went to print, rumors spread like wildfire that another local mainstay was about to succumb to the same sad fate as the Sports Depot and Harpers Ferry. Unfortunately the rumor was true and represents one of the harshest blows the neighborhood has seen: after this weekend, the Allston Café will be closing its doors and becomes another casualty to rising rent.

Co-owner to the café, Derek Brown, explains what finally did them in. “We expected a $500 increase, but they raised our [monthly] rent $1,700 in January. That was pretty much the last nail in the coffin.” He said. “We’ve just been fighting with [our landlord] for about 11 months now trying to come to an agreement.” Brown continued to say that their biggest obstacle was a lack of communication with their landlord who hails from a “traditional Iranian background.”

“He doesn’t talk to women,” he  explained which clearly made things difficult for his business partner and wife, Page Masse. “He just comes in and yells, and [we] have to go through his lawyer just to find out what he was yelling about.”

Brown and Masse took over the café in October 2007 after Herrell’s made a push to make the space more uniformed to its other locations but at a great financial risk. “[We] bought the place two weeks before the housing market crash with about $200 left in our pocket after the purchase.” Brown said. “We’ve managed to hold on to the place for three years. I’m a little impressed with that. I really should have closed in January. I’ve been doing nothing but hurting myself since then.”

They’ve struggled to persevere for this long because as any true Allstonian will attest, the Allston Café is more than just a coffee shop and vegan friendly eatery. It’s the heart of the community, and its loss will be detrimental to the neighborhood I can only feel is crumbling beneath us. Armin Bachman, co-owner of the newly opened Orchard Skate Shop and a current Allston Café employee, stresses the local importance the establishment possesses. “[The café] epitomized the choosing in the [skate shop’s] location. It just had the energy.”

Personally, I couldn’t agree more. I moved to Allston in September of last year. The first day of my new residency I got coffee somewhere else. The second day, and twice a day everyday from then on, I went to the Allston Café. It’s a place for people who truly love Allston, not just college students in limbo using the neighborhood as the stepping stone between school and somewhere else once they’re handed that diploma. I knew no one but my roommates when I moved to this pocket of Boston, and only have the café to thank for changing that. Brown put it best: “There’s nowhere else for the freaks and geeks to go.”

With that, he offers us one little inkling of hope. “I’d like to reopen–obviously at a smaller location–but we have to do a little damage control first.” Brown said. Sadly, the location of soon to be former café will undoubtedly be chalked up to a loss. If the Allston Café can’t keep afloat with such a ridiculously high rent, then it’s unlikely that any independent can.