By the time you read this, a San Diego Superior Court judge may have issued a written notice of her Oct. 21 finding – that UCSD owns the property on which its Ché Café sits and that the eviction notice the school issued the vegan eatery and music venue last summer was sufficient. Bryan Pease, attorney for the Ché, said on Oct. 20 that he thought Judge Katherine Bacal would the following day sign the university’s written notice of her decision, after which the Ché would have five days to vacate its premises at 1000 Scholars Drive, just east of La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum Studio.
At the moment, Bacal hasn’t signed whatever notice the university may issue, and at least one representative of the student-run Ché said that Bacal’s decision was not the end of the café’s road. A recent note on the venue’s website (checafe.ucsd.edu) demanded that the university roll back the eviction procedure in the interest of the democratic process; the venue’s blog announced an Oct. 28 rally in the venue’s support and that the collective allegedly has 14,000 favorable petition signatures it intended to present to university Chancellor Pradeep Khosla. Khosla wasn’t available to receive the supporters, but the latter have said they will seek an audience with him again next week. About 100 demonstrators attended the Oct. 28 event.
The relationship between the Ché and UCSD, in fact, has been fairly uneasy over the last several years. Arguments about rent and insurance nonpayment, allegations of UCSD’s attempt to decertify the collective that administers the Ché, the “holdover” status in the Ché’s rent agreement and various safety concerns date to at least 2006, when UCSD and the Ché last signed a lease. Two years later, the venue didn’t renew, and it’s been operating on a month-to-month extension since then.
When it opened as a campus hub for all-ages concerts, inexpensive food and unencumbered sociopolitical discussion, it came with a certain historical sentiment, reflected in its name. “C-h-é” stands for Cheap, Healthy Eats, but the eatery’s namesake is Argentine theorist and Marxist revolutionary Ernesto (Che) Guevara, who in the 1950s and ’60s rebelled against the capitalist establishment amid the misery he experienced as a medical student.
Dirk Sutro, UCSD arts communications manager and an ardent supporter of the Ché, took the historical context a step further. There’s a local legacy here, Sutro wrote in a July letter to La Jolla Village News, which on June 27 had published my editorial calling for the Ché’s closure. “The murals at the Ché,” Sutro wrote, “are an essential part of the venue’s history and ongoing value… They depict Chicano history, and they were painted by prominent artist and activist Mario Torero — who also did murals in [San Diego’s] Barrio Logan… I am certain that if Torero were a member of the white/Euro art mainstream, UCSD and community leaders would be bending over backwards to preserve the Ché and Torero’s murals.
“The Ché,” Sutro continued, “occupies one of the few remaining buildings from the days when the UCSD campus was Camp Matthews, a Marine base. As such, it represents the kinds of modest and functional buildings which were the predominant centers for education in the campus’ early years… These old and unpretentious buildings illustrate how an important university is often born with innovation and creativity, not with fancy architecture. A few UCSD faculty were here in the late ’60s, and they fondly recall those days of creating a new university from scratch on the West Coast, in a setting very different from the East Coast Ivy League.”
But “Ivy League” indeed has its age connotations, and maybe – just maybe – state historic preservation is one of them. One unidentified California Historical Society staffer, however, said the idea won’t wash as a means of keeping the Ché’s doors open. Her organization, she explained, grants preservation status only to buildings at least 50 years old (the Ché opened in 1980). Rental disputes and overdue repairs, she added, would weigh into the balance of negotiations, as would the fact that Guevara (who died in 1967) has no historical place in the university’s direction.
Neither does the state Office of Historic Preservation have an answer. It presents its Governor’s Historic Preservation Awards every November following an extensive nomination period. “Any individual, organization, company, or local, state or federal agency involved in historic preservation is eligible to be nominated,” its website says, without reference to age. “Eligible nominees will have made significant contributions over time to the advancement of historic preservation and/or the preservation of historical resources in California.”
However, the site says, “Projects shall have been completed (or, for large-scale, phased projects, had a substantial portion completed) within the last three years.” Repairs to bring the Ché up to snuff would cost $700,000. Diane Barclay, the office’s outreach and communications coordinator, added that “the Governor’s Historic Preservation Awards, would not be able in any way to help in a situation like that. Efforts on the nominated projects have been made on behalf of historic preservation. Its focus is in a totally different direction.” The past can’t argue in the Ché’s favor, and the present is too mired in the legal process to care. Maybe the anonymous historical society lady has the best suggestion of all. An equitable solution, she said, might lie in existing resources only steps from the café itself. The university’s business-oriented Rady School of Management; the vegan-oriented culinary resources at the school’s Center for Integrative Medicine; the Jacobs School of Engineering’s savvy in structural integrity: UCSD, which U.S. News & World Report recently ranked 18th best in the world, is loopy with means to address the questions within and outside Bacal’s ruling. A sense of student-inspired internal enterprise – the stuff of the successful educational process – might mean the difference between the venue’s closure and a new commitment to an icon of music, art, free expression and cheap, healthy eats. The courts have noble advantages, but they’re no match for innovative thought and solution; meanwhile, the friction between the Ché and its parent campus has been escalating since the middle of the last decade. A few more days, as even Bacal might agree, won’t hurt.