New Cafe Frida quickens the pace of change on A Street in Santa Rosa

The South of A Street Arts District, also known as SOFA, is a short walk from downtown Santa Rosa and yet a world unto itself.

Out of sight and out of mind, just south of the Santa Rosa Plaza mall, the neighborhood is bordered by busy Santa Rosa Avenue and highways 101 and 12, tucked into a corner behind Juilliard Park. This quaint little cluster of art galleries, restaurants and unconventional shops seems somehow miles away from busier blocks nearby.

Even so, for more than two decades, it has been gradually emerging as the next big thing in town.

Cafe Frida

Now, the buzz has increased again about the atmospheric little neighborhood, largely because of the annual Winterblast street fair which celebrated its 15th year last November and most recently with the opening of Cafe Frida, named for famed Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

Cafe Frida joins the well-known Spinster Sisters, at the corner of A Street and Sebastopol Avenue, as a destination for hungry visitors. It’s another boost for this compact but complex little neighborhood populated by an eclectic mix of businesses including The Imaginists theater company, Avalow Nurseries and Gardens, Jeremiah’s Photo Corner, Top Shelf Barbershop, Papillon Floral Design and more.

Serving as a cafe, coffee house and art gallery, Cafe Frida boasts a notable pair of co-owners: Mario Uribe, one of A Street’s longtime, high-profile artists, and his son-in-law, Mamadou Diouf, who has worked at several of the Stark restaurant family’s most popular spots, including Stark’s Steakhouse, Willi’s Wine Bar and Bird & The Bottle.

“We’re so thrilled Mario and Mamadou have opened a cafe,” said Olivia Rivas, owner of Papillon Floral Design. “It means people will stay and walk around. We always need more foot traffic.”

It’s typical of the quirky A Street neighborhood that the new Cafe Frida is not actually on A Street. Instead, it’s behind one of the neighborhood’s numerous art studios, at the end of a long driveway that opens up onto it and leads to the cafe and its outdoor patio. Inside, the cafe is a bright and open space with colorful paintings adorning the walls.

A bit farther down the 300 block of A Street, between the Santa Rosa Arts Center and Tibidabo Photo Studio, an official-looking street sign announces Art Alley, which leads to more artist studios, outdoor murals, the Backstreet Gallery and Uribe’s Sei Shen Gallery.

The partners at Cafe Frida embrace the intimate, leisurely atmosphere in the South of A Street district (sometimes written without the “of”).

“Food, art and creativity are all related,” Diouf said. “We’re all living in our zones, with computers. This is a place where people can come and talk.”

Cultural influences

The two owners at the new cafe bring to the enterprise an interesting combination of cultural influences as well as their varied job experience. Born in Southern California to parents of Basque heritage, Uribe spent his childhood at their Baja California home in Mexico, surrounded by their Japanese art collection. Diouf, originally from Senegal, has worked for 20 years in the hospitality business.

The cafe - open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday through Sunday - was doing a brisk business on a recent morning.

The emphasis is on salad, sandwiches (ranging from lox on toast to an “avocado toast-ada”) and good coffee, Diouf explained. Patrons paused at the wall at one end of the room to gaze at a portrait Uribe painted of Frida Kahlo, flanked on one side by her husband, painter Diego Rivera, and on the other by Luther Burbank, a nod to the famed horticulturalist whose home and gardens is nearby on Santa Rosa Avenue.

“My own personal mission is to enhance the arts community here,” Uribe said. “Also, I want to invite the Hispanic community in, because Frida is part of their culture. The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has been in touch and they’re going to be joining us in planning some events here.”

Gradual turnaround

A Street was a busy and popular part of town in the late 1940s, but it later gained a reputation as an area tainted by crime, drug use and vagrancy, primarily because of its proximity to the park.

Rivas of Papillon, who lived in an apartment above Jeremiah’s Photo Corner for a while in the ’90s and returned to A Street as a merchant a couple of years ago, noted a dramatic difference in the area now.

“I remember people would say you wouldn’t want to walk through Juilliard Park after dark, although I never found it that way,” she said. “But it has gotten better and better. People are coming back.”

Open studio tour

In addition to the growing popularity of the annual Winterblast festival, which drew more than 1,500 people last year, another sign of A Street’s transition is the news that it will be included in the annual Art at the Source open studio tour for the first time, in June. Managed by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, the event was founded in 1995 and previously confined mostly to western Sonoma County.

“This gives us more of a connection with the arts community as a whole,” said Simmon Factor, who set up the Chroma Gallery at 312 A St. in 2013 and transformed it into the nonprofit Santa Rosa Arts Center in 2017.

“One of the biggest changes in A Street is that it has gotten cleaned up, and Juilliard has, too,” Factor said. “The area has become gentrified and more a prime spot for young families to visit. The summer concerts at the park help, too.”

To Factor, the opening of Cafe Frida is just one more step in the right direction.

“Winterblast definitely puts us on the map, but that’s only once a year,” he said. “Spinster Sisters helps, of course, and we definitely see our gallery getting more walk-by traffic since Cafe Frida opened.”

For a map of the South A Street Arts District (SOFA) and more information, go online to sofasantarosa.com.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 707-521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @danarts.