Koffi and The Patio Cafe

In the fancy Las Palmas neighborhood of Palm Springs, away from the main tourist downtown...



...at the corner of Alejo and Palm Canyon...



...there is a collection of designer antique shops called The Corridor (click here for their website).



Though one store specializes in Chinese antiques...



...that needs to sell its stock of faux Chinese tomb soldiers...



...most of the stores specialize in weathered Mexican furniture and objects that are often quite beautiful and not outrageously priced.



Even better than the stores, however, is a local coffee and pastry shop that was opened in 2002 by a couple of Palm Springs residents (click here for their great website).



It is usually packed to the gills in the mornings with customers...



...most of them gay men.



Even better than the upscale coffee shop is the central courtyard...



...with its huge lawn and picnic tables, where you can sit down and gossip with friends or read leftover newspapers (The Los Angeles Times and The Desert Sun along with a myriad of free gay rags).



The place also hosts a free wifi network so you see a cross-section of folk working on their computers and checking their email...



...when they are not fending off the multitude of dogs begging for treats.



The courtyard is a bit off the beaten path so you need to know about the place, but I can't recommend it highly enough.



The atmosphere reminds me of the Patio Cafe, an Arcadian place in San Francisco's Castro District during the late 1970s that similarly was a coffee and sandwich joint where you could take your goods outdoors to a beautiful lawn surrounded by flower beds.



Also adjoining the hidden back lawn and garden was a wonderful bookshop whose back doors led to a wide wooden staircase where beautiful young men would sprawl all afternoon with novels and capuccinos.



The lawn vanished soon enough and was replaced by a large outdoor restaurant for most of the 1980s and 1990s.



It was still called The Patio Cafe, and was quite successful, until the restaurant and the warren of hippie shops surrounding it were closed by the infamous Les Natali, who seems to be the Walter Shorenstein real estate mogul of San Francisco's gay world, shutting down places for redevelopment and then never reopening their doors, probably for tax reasons.



But let's not speak of dark people or dark things for the moment, and instead celebrate an oddly beautiful, spontaneously created hangout that reminds me of a vanished San Francisco Eden.