No Blues for This City
Nicholas Lewis, a clarinetist with the Richmond Symphony, relaxes at GlobeHopper Coffeehouse in Shockoe Bottom.
You know that '80s show about a bar where everyone knows your name?
Well, forget Boston and Norm.
Richmond's got GlobeHopper Coffeehouse & Lounge and Nicholas Lewis. Or Crossroads Coffee & Ice Cream and Nicholas Lewis. Or Lift Coffee Shop and Nicholas Lewis. Or the newest member of Lewis' espresso rotation – Ellwood's Coffee – across the parking lot from Ellwood Thompson's Natural Market.
Lewis recently talked about his love of Richmond's coffeehouses at – where else? – his Shockoe Bottom corner hangout, GlobeHopper.
"This place really has a very European feel which is why I especially like it," he said. "There aren't too many places that feel like this in Richmond."
It's not just the java that invites him to spend much of his free time socializing and networking in such places.
A clarinetist for the Richmond Symphony, Lewis says it's all about the friendships that grow from a few well-placed sofas, a hot cup of coffee and gooey Rice Krispies Treats. (Lewis says the ones at GlobeHopper are made with extra butter.)
In addition to playing in the symphony, Lewis teaches at Howard University in Washington and teaches part time at Duke University. He also plays with various ensembles. He travels a lot. But when he's in Richmond, it's not hard to find him.
"How much time do I spend in this café?" he asked Sharon Hamon-Boomer, a barista at GlobeHopper, during an afternoon visit earlier this summer.
"A lot," she said, adding that he frequents other places, too. "He cheats on us." "And everybody knows this about me," Lewis said.
"When he can, he's always in here," Hamon-Boomer said. Lewis has lived in Richmond for nine of the 12 years he has played with the symphony. His love of the city and its history is evident.
"I gotta say, downtown really is, and always has been, quite extraordinary," he said.
"When I first came here and I learned of Shockoe Bottom and it being sort of the cultural point of convergence, historically, for Richmond [with] the slaves coming off the boat [and]... the indigenous Indian tribe [and]... the Irish merchants in Shockoe Slip – to have all that represented in a space, and for that to be the cultural legacy of that neighborhood, that's extraordinary," Lewis said. "That's something that really should be celebrated."
Downtown's coffee shops represent for Lewis a place where the city's diversity comes through.
"You actually see black people here in equal proportion of the demographic most of the time," he said. "That just doesn't happen everywhere."
He ventures outside the city often for work or to go to his favorite restaurant – Mekong Restaurant on West Broad Street.
But "I really will never cease to wave the banner for downtown," he said.
This article originally published in Discover Richmond. Click here to view more Discover articles, or send us an e-mail to request a copy of the magazine.
Please sign in to respond | | Register