Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

First Look at Humboldt Park's Newest Coffee Shop, C.C. Ferns

By Darryl Holliday | April 27, 2015 9:46am | Updated on April 28, 2015 10:05am

HUMBOLDT PARK — The newest addition to the quickly developing California and Augusta intersection is a cafe from restaurantuer Brendan Sodikoff, according to a Facebook post announcing the Monday morning opening.

C.C. Ferns Coffee, 2806 W. Augusta Blvd. is located toward the back end of the California Clipper (hence the "C.C." name). The cafe and cigar is pouring La Colombe coffee and espresso products but also offers a small range of cigars and alcoholic beverages, including "boozy steamers."

The shop is meant to "fill a void that was left when KnockBox Cafe closed," C.C. Ferns shop manager Ryan Dailey said Monday.

The name is a riff on "Fern Bars," American slang for upscale bars that catered largely to an emerging class of independent, upwardly-mobile women in the 1970s, according to Dailey. Fern Bars, named for their fern and plant-based decor, ended up spawning and popularizing what are now common terms like "lemon drop" martinis, frozen daquiris and pina coladas.

C.C Ferns takes it's name from that period of classic San Francisco history but the new cafe just wants to be "the neighborhood spot" in Humboldt Park, Dailey said.

Sodikoff — the restauratuer behind popular spots like Green Street Smoked Meats, Au Cheval and Gilt Bar — overhauled California Clipper last year and said he had big plans for Discount Muffler and Brake, an auto shop at the same intersection.

Last year, neighborhood "anchors" like Knockbox Café and the nearby Peanut Gallery closed after their leases were discontinued on the block — all four corners of which are owned by landlord Gino Battaglia, who said the decision to overhaul the intersection was about forming a good fit for all sides of the changing neighborhood.

"I never try to get the last dollar out of a building," Battaglia told DNAinfo last year. "I have a certain vision. I want a little bit more activity there and that’s my feeling."

A cafe is part of a larger design for the intersection, Battaglia said in May 2014, because, “a coffee shop brings people together — it’s a place where anyone can get out of their house and be together.” He felt Humboldt Park "needed a coffee shop to act as a bridge between the older residents and the next generation,” he said.

For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here: