LOS ANGELES — At 9:30 a.m. on a Thursday, the Harrys began arriving at Cafe Beachwood. Young people with neon hair extensions, colorful knitted sweaters and blouses illustrated with cherries, sunflowers and the word “Pleasing” descended from rental cars and Ubers. By 10:30 a.m., there was a 30-minute wait at the small restaurant, which has been around since the 1970s in the heart of Beachwood Canyon, and a bunch of teenagers were taking photos outside its door.
Who are the Harrys? They’re Harry Styles superfans, and hordes of them have been making a pilgrimage to Café Beachwood since December 2019, when the superstar mentioned the restaurant in the song “Falling”: “And the coffee’s out at the Beachwood Cafe”. That line—which Styles fans believe is about his ex Camille Rowe, formerly a Beachwood Canyon resident—began to draw fans to the cafe.
“I felt like coming here would complete the whole Harry Styles experience,” said Caysey Gossweiler, 27, of Maryland.
“You panic; I could literally evaporate thinking about it,” Noelle Jay, 26, said of standing in the same space where Styles once ate eggs. His cousin Mia Tucci, 17, added: “He’s like a god.”
When Mike Fahim, the cafe’s owner, took over the reins in the fall of 2019, the crowd was a mix of locals, tourists, movie studio figures and celebrities trying to blend in. In early 2020, the clientele began to shift to Gen Z girls and young women, some of whom bring cardboard cutouts of Styles for photos.
Fahim, who had never heard of Styles, welcomed the link. The tip jar now says, “Harry tips here.” And he and his staff are happy to take photos and answer questions about what Styles is said to have eaten (the Beachwood Scramble) and where he sat (the table in the center of the room and the booth in the far right corner). . If Styles is in the City—as he was for two weeks in the fall, when the cafe’s menu and merchandise sold out—he doubles the staff and supplies.
When Styles was at the Kia Forum at the end of January, wait times in the cafe were 2-3 hours over the weekend. At one point on Saturday, diners sang “Falling” in chorus.
Prior to the wave of Styles fans, Fahim typically served 300 diners Friday through Sunday; he now serves a thousand on average. The locals still come, but often complain about wait times and lack of parking, and if they see a line, they walk away.
Most fans agree that this is no longer a place Styles would likely visit. Still, “it’s cool to imagine him sitting there sad and alone,” said Bryn Langrock, 23.
But if Styles were to sit in a chair at Cafe Beachwood again, Fahim says he knows what he would say: “Thank you.”
By: MOLLY CREEDEN
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6623105, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-03-22 00:30:09
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