Old Arizona. . . It's Probably New To You

I mentioned to Jeremy last week that I’d driven by a strange little place called Old Arizona, right at the southern end of Eat Street where Nicollet dead-ends. There was a cluster of brightly-painted, Southwestern buildings with a stone courtyard and a cloth sign strung from the posts that said Cafe and Wine Bar.

"Yeah, what is that place?" he asked. "I’ve always wondered."

And that’s when I knew I was onto something. Because if Iggers hasn’t been to an eatery, you know it’s either two minutes old or way, WAY off the grid.

So I went to Old Arizona, walking in to find a tidy, happy little cafe strung with chili pepper lights, decorated with shelves of Fiestaware, and smelling of simmering soup. Two white-haired women sat at the table in the front window. One of them wore an apron that said "Elizabeth." I asked where I might find the proprietors and both of them stood.

It turns out Old Arizona has been in existence, on this gritty end of Nicollet in what was, 100 years ago, Twin City Scenic Company — a manufacturer of hand-painted vaudeville sets — since 1993. ("Oh, people think we’re new all the time," the ladies said.) It’s the brain child of Darcy Knight and Elizabeth Trumble, two former film staffers who met while working on the set of Bill Pohlad‘s Old Explorers back in 1989 and decided together to build something that had never even been conceived of before.

You see, Old Arizona is not any old charming 12-seat cafe and wine bar. It’s a theater, performance venue, party room, yoga studio, feng shui consultancy, chocolate "lounge," tea shop, and — most importantly — a thriving after-school program for at-risk youth. Knight and Trumble just rescued the historic Log Cabin Flowers structure, because it was going to be destroyed, and hauled it all the way from Franklin Avenue to their own side yard. Oh, and if all goes according to plan, they’re going to open an off-sale wine store in the coming months.

And for 14 years, they’ve been doing all of this together, just the two of them, with no employees except a 3/4-time coordinator for the after-school programs.

The cafe serves from 11-7 Wednesday through Saturday (except when it doesn’t — more on this below). Trumble does all the cooking. She has a very limited menu, but what she does make is exquisite: Michael’s Favorite, a sandwich of Brie, tart apple, arugula and fig spread on ciabatta; a grilled Rachel, with Jarlsburg and plenty of sauerkraut; and the Old Arizona Signature Sandwich, with oven-roasted turkey and Dubliner cheddar with raspberry chipotle mayo. There’s a fresh, organic soup each day. A wine list that includes a Gabbiano Pinot Grigio, the Chateau St. Jean Fumé Blanc, and a Malbec from the Argentinian winery Altos Las Hormigas.

Old Arizona’s tea shop is a mystical collage of Laughing Buddha statues, waterfalls, organic herbs, and incense, as well as books on herbology, Feng Shui, eastern medicine, and witchcraft. Also tea, which they sell in small plastic bags by the ounce. There’s top-quality chocolate, too. And behind this, a theatrical space that seats 120 (it accomodates 200 standing) which they rent out for wedding receptions, artist’s shows, and private parties.

On any given day, they might have half a dozen customers in the cafe — more in the weeks after the performance space is rented and people have been made aware they exist. But typically, those extras dwindle away, leaving the stalwart regulars who can’t get enough of Michael’s Favorite or wouldn’t know where else to get their jasmine pearl tea.

One of the reasons, I suspect, is that Knight and Trumble are rather erratic about their hours of operation. They close if one of them is ill or they must, for whatever reason, leave town. (This coming Friday and Saturday, for instance, they’ll be in Wisconsin with their friend Ali Salim, helping him celebrate the film Sweetland, on which they both worked. So Old Arizona will be closed.) They keep talking about hiring someone to work alongside them, but somehow that never happens. The money isn’t there. And besides, they have more important things on their minds.

Because the fact is that The Arizona Bridge Project — the umbrella name for their girls’ programs — is really at the heart of this thing. Eighteen years ago, before she met Trumble, Knight was living in the neighborhood and becoming aware of the problems facing its youth.

"I watched young girls sell themselves out on the street corner," Knight says. "And I found myself pacing every night, wondering why someone wasn’t doing something about this."

So she set out to do exactly that. And while her entrepreneurial ideas may seem a bit ungrounded in the reality of the commercial mainstream, her vision for an after-school program that would keep girls off the streets has become very real. The Arizona Bridge Project has served thousands of young women, ages 13-17, providing them with food, care, and a variety of programming ranging from songwriting to visual arts to dance. Old Arizona has received funding from Hennepin County, the McKnight Foundation, and (before Avista took over) the former Star Tribune Foundation. They also accept private donations.

"It’s all about teenage girls who need us finding their way here," says Knight. "That’s really what we’re about."

This is all quite odd, I grant you. The food, the wine, the tea, the chocolate, the spiritual message, and the kids. The haphazard hours and sprawling "complex" and mixed missions. But if you spend an hour with Trumble and Knight, as I did, I swear: somehow, it all starts to make sense. And you’d be hard pressed to find a cozier place for a bowl of homemade soup.