When Café Tropical, the iconic Silver Lake coffeehouse that served locals Café Cubanos, guava cheese pastries, medianoche sandwiches, and outstanding sugar-coated apple turnovers that sparkled like diamonds, closed in December 2023 after 48 years, many Los Angeles residents mourned—until the good news of its reopening arrived in March.

This essay was adapted from the Alta Weekly newsletter, which is published every Thursday. To continue reading, Alta-Journal Member for only $3 per month.
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For those of us who knew, there was another reason to love Café Tropical: It held a central place in the Los Angeles recovery community.

Ten years ago, when I moved into a garage studio apartment overlooking the 99 Cents Only store in Silver Lake, I was newly divorced after 25 years of marriage. My kids were in college, and I was trying to figure out my life as a single woman in a world I didn’t know very well. I had raised my sons and daughter in the suburbs of Glendale and La Crescenta-Montrose, and I felt lost at my new address near Sunset Junction, then and now a hipster hotbed. I stood out like the conventional mom I was, but I knew one surefire way to fit in: go to a meeting.

I was long sober by this point, and the prospect of attending another meeting didn’t make me nervous, but walking east on Sunset Avenue toward Café Tropical, where a 7 a.m. meeting was taking place, I felt like a newborn fawn on legs that could barely support me. I passed Millie’s Café as it opened for the day, and then Los Globos, touted on its website as “LA’s top destination for multicultural nightlife,” where the sidewalk was littered with the remnants of the previous night – twisted cigarette packs, condom wrappers, a woman’s shoe.

The back room of Café Tropical, accessed not through the main entrance on Sunset Street but through a side entrance on Parkman Street, was a place where the sacred and the profane of daily life in the City of Angels met. It was a place where countless locals worked to get sober – and stay sober.

The Tropical had meetings almost hourly: four, five, six meetings a day, covering alcoholism and drug addiction, and offering just about every kind of support group there is. It was in that back room that I met my new neighbors and future friends. We would often buy coffee before heading into the back room because we wanted to support the institution that supported us. Then we would find a seat on the wooden benches that surrounded the room, covered with cushions that had recently been jazzed up with red covers and white piping, or settle down on metal folding chairs.

A meeting would have as many as 40 participants. At one point a staff member would come by with free, fresh coffee and pastries; the guava rolls were always excellent. As is customary at a recovery meeting, we collected the donations, making us self-sustaining through our own contributions, and the treasurer would split the till and throw wads of cash into the tip jar for Tropical’s beloved crew.

As I settled into my new life in Silver Lake, I was encouraged every time I drove past the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Parkman Avenue and saw people leaving or entering the next meeting at the Tropical. Many of them were gathered on the side street, many with cigarettes to their lips, sharing their problems and supporting their fellow man. These small gatherings of people gave me the courage I needed to continue on my own shaky new path.

Every segment of Los Angeles society was represented here at one time or another: famous actors mingled with carpenters, nurses and plumbers. Waitresses met with technicians. Bartenders chatted with lawyers. Students supported screenwriters. Thanks to this encounter and the generosity of our hosts, I finally found my place in Silver Lake and began my new life.

I attended that 7am meeting for the last time in late 2019 and was honored to be invited to speak. Then the following year, the pandemic hit, just as I was moving out of state. When I heard the cafe was closing, I called a friend who had been heavily involved, and she told me the history of meetings during the pandemic.

All meetings had been online, she said, where they grew and thrived. The 7 a.m. group that had been formed at Café Tropical had 90 or more online participants, many of whom sent donations. Knowing the cafe was struggling during the pandemic, the groups reciprocated the generosity the restaurant had shown them in previous years, sending money in gratitude for hosting them for so long. In-person meetings at the cafe eventually resumed, but by this time they were in a smaller space and less frequent. Still, they continued. We all need a place to belong, and Café Tropical was that for so many.

And then came the news of the cafe’s closure, which shocked many of us.

But now—good news!—with the reopening of the Tropical, meetings will resume and Café Tropical has a chance to reinvent itself under new ownership. The meetings are happening because the devastating effects of addiction continue, and the blessings and comfort for those of us finding our way through recovery continue to be a needed balm.

For all I know, there might be a recently divorced woman living in my old garage flat in Edgecliffe. If she fancy a good meeting – and a really good medianoche sandwich or an exquisite apple pie – I have a suggestion for her.•

Bernadette Murphy, a native of Los Angeles and now living in Park City, Utah, is an author and New York Times– Bestselling ghostwriter.