Discovering Troy

Call it the Alice's Restaurant of post-riot L.A. Perched on the edge of downtown's Chandleresque warehouse district, there's a coffeehouse-gallery that's much more than just the wee-hours hangout and performance space it seems at first glance. Launched in 1990 by Sean Carrillo and Bibbe Hansen, the Troy Cafe is ground zero for one of L.A.'s most vital communities, the city's (and the nation's) hottest Latino artists. Rising stars such as the comic trio Culture Clash, feminist folksters Las Tres, and film director Marcus De Leon have made Troy their headquarters. Others—painter/cop Dan Calderon, vocalist Charles Lane, and the comedians of Chicano Secret Service— exhibit their art and work the kinks out of new material there. "L.A. is 40 percent Latino, but the venues open to us are limited,'' says Carrillo. "Troy is an outlet. Like the Algonquin and the Cabaret Voltaire, Troy serves a community."

Troy comes by its artsy bohemianism honestly. Screenwriter Hansen is an Andy Warhol alumna who appeared alongside Edie Sedgwick in the flick Prison. Boyle Heights homey Carrillo is a film editor, although he's better known as one of the guerrilla artists of ASCO, the Chicano collective of the 70s and early 80s, famous for its strikes on such bastions of Latino invisibility as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "Although Troy's primarily Chicano, it's a crosscultural exchange," adds the Swedish-Jewish Hansen. It's for "everybody who is 'Other'—women, gays, blacks, Chicanos—so there's a common agenda." Orale, pass the cappuccino.

JAN BRESLAUER