Hughes had been a busboy in a Washington hotel in the 1920s when he famously slipped a sheaf of poems to a white guest, poet Vachel Lindsay, who hailed the young man’s talent. People didn’t know what to make of this unexpectedly bustling homage to Langston Hughes, just off Washington’s old Black Broadway, the U Street corridor, on the ground floor of a gentrifying condo project called the Langston Lofts. 7, 2005, the day the first Busboys opened at 14th and V streets NW, to almost immediate acclaim, profits and lines out the door. One of the most improbable business models in restaurant history was greeted with a question. Or it could be the essential piece of the collage that is Andy Shallal. To remind ourselves that we are not alone in this never-ending quest.” We have gathered all of you, our peace community, to share, to inspire, to entertain and to feed. Finally, the festivities are edged with outrage over the approaching execution of Troy Davis, set for later this night in Georgia.ĭrawing on words Shallal typed at the bar, he says to the group: “Tonight is our practical act of peace. The work is a collage, Shallal’s signature style, composed of famous dissenters and their words entwined with the four rivers of Langston Hughes’s poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”Īnd it’s the International Day of Peace, so Shallal has everyone fill out postcards with peace messages to President Obama. It’s also the dedication of the restaurant’s Zinn Room, with its huge mural by Shallal. It’s a fundraiser for the Zinn Education Project, based on the work of the late Howard Zinn, a mentor of Shallal’s, whose “A People’s History of the United States” is a touchstone of progressive pedagogy. The purpose of this evening in early autumn is fourfold and high-minded to within an inch of its life, as most Shallal productions are. “At the end of the day, he brings together Thai dipping sauce and radical politics.”
“Isn’t that Andy’s genius?” author and emcee David Zirin asks the crowd. They’ve come for a heaping helping of cross-racial progressive reaffirmation, marinated in that ineffable Busboys recipe of communal tables and couches, groovy music, quirky slide projections, p olitically inspired art and a not- too-politically-correct menu. “I’m not nervous anymore,” Shallal says, though he’s still watchful as folks fill the hipster warehouse-style establishment.
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