Calendula customers, apparently. In late September, a sign on Calendula's door said: "Closed, owing to financial difficulties."
Eventually, I phoned the organizer who'd helped bring Calendula down--Pete Beaman of the Wobblies. Beaman was guarded when I told him I was writing for Inc. "Why would I want to support their capitalist agenda?" he asked me. He said he'd take my interview request to his board and get back to me. I never heard from him.
Thinking things over, I began to hone a certain respect for Craig Rosebraugh. If nothing else, the guy was willing to get down in the mud. He was tenacious.
When Rosebraugh was working with the Earth Liberation Front, he suffered the ill effects of low cholesterol. He was frequently dizzy. He hallucinated; he lost his balance. He had severe food allergies. Rosebraugh conducted over 700 media interviews, many under the hot glare of TV studio lights. He never once spoke of his illness. He stayed on message. He also wrangled, he says, with an FBI agent who conducted "psychological warfare." After one raid, the agent left all of Rosebraugh's papers torn up and piled in a sort of pyre in his bedroom. On top, in shreds, was an announcement for the funeral of Rosebraugh's grandfather. Rosebraugh cleaned up the mess and kept working.
On December 12, Calendula café reopened for business. This time it had a pared-down staff of nine. Rosebraugh himself was shaping the menu and relying on his digital scale for salvation--he immediately began the weighing of scraps and monitoring of costs that he thought would save him. Soon, his employees would be shielded from his astringency by two new managers, cook Tony Hauth and waitress Allison Bagby. Hauth works off the clock an hour every day, "just because I want to see this place still going in a year," and Bagby, who's served at Calendula almost since it opened, has defended Rosebraugh on indymedia. "I have quit two jobs due to my bosses saying something rude to me," she wrote. "I would leave this job too if there was any reason to."
Ive' brought my parents, my daughter, and friends to Calendula, and each time I've taken delight in telling my guests that the place is run by the unrepentant Face of Ecoterrorism.
I've eaten at calendula a number of times since the reopening. I've brought my parents, my daughter, and friends, and each time I've taken delight in telling my guests that the place was run by the unrepentant Face of Ecoterrorism. I've liked watching them sit there in the dim lamplight of the dining room, trying to add that one up, because in truth Calendula is an exceptionally pleasant place to eat. Rosebraugh had contradicted himself once again: The man who'd told me, "There are no utopias" had created what he calls, in his promotional literature, "a gourmet vegan paradise." He'd labored to attain a space that was true to the chiffony vibe of that phrase. As you eat at Calendula, you can see that he worked at it earnestly--and that some details are a bit overwrought. The mojitos, for instance--why did Rosebraugh give them this funky vegetable undertow? Really, who needs organic cilantro in a cocktail?
But that's a minor point. Mostly, Calendula does what any restaurant must: It lulls you. It cocoons you. And so recently, on a warm night, I found myself at Calendula sipping a chocolate martini and listening to the wheedling strains of the Decemberists playing softly on the stereo. The waitress came around and, with a tattooed arm, replenished my water glass. The busperson cleared the neighboring table and delivered the young couple there--sober and Pilates-lean--a pot of chamomile tea.
Just before 10, a tall, thin man--slightly disheveled, with his shirt hanging loose--burst up the steps and into the dining room. It was Rosebraugh himself, and for maybe two seconds he stood there, amid the tables, pivoting, as though in search of lost keys. And right then I thought: What would it be like to be him, to carry a storm of conflicting ideals inside you and to feel obliged, always, to force those ideals on the world, even as others called you a jerk?
Partly, I reckoned, Rosebraugh felt proud: Calendula is now turning a slim profit most months. (It's been accepted in Portland as part of the woodwork--as a place where, say, a stylish real estate agent might take her more earth-friendly clients.) But partly, I was sure, Rosebraugh also felt frazzled. I remembered him telling me, "When I'm working 100 hours a week, I feel guilty that I'm not doing activism." And I remembered visiting him once for 10 minutes in his office in Calendula's basement.
For all but a few seconds, Rosebraugh stared straight at his computer screen, manipulating a graphic image of a calendula flower. The flower would decorate a menu, and it was fulgent and lovely, in keeping with the gentle vibe of the Calendula brand. Rosebraugh sat with his back facing me, his responses terse as he dialed in on his task. He was working: His restaurant was going to succeed, even if, in succeeding, he had to embrace the very capitalist system he yearned to destroy with a war. He would succeed.
"So is there anything else you want to say?" I asked into the tense silence.
"No," Rosebraugh said. One syllable.
I left. Rosebraugh kept working. He peered into the screen, the war bubbling on, as always, inside his head.
