Mourning Glory: Rick Hankus built a community around Java Man, Ocean Diner
by Kevin Cody Hermosans who want to impress out-of-town guests and business clients probably won’t take them to one of the town’s many upscale restaurants. They’re more likely to take them to Java Man for coffee and a morning glory muffin, knowing when they walk in the door, Nick, or Chuy, or Daniel will greet them by name. And if they take a table outside, regulars at the other tables will ask what they’ve been up to. If they want privacy, they’ll sit inside, where the little, red, 1929 beach cottage is broken up into small, semi private rooms. There was a Starbucks down the street from Java Man, and two Starbucks up the street. All three recently closed. In a town where wealthy newcomers dress down to fit in, Java Man has more cachet. Hankus opened Java Man in 1992, the same year Seattle’s Starbucks went public with its minimalist, cookie cutter coffee houses. Hankus’ vision was a beatnik era coffee house, like Hermosa’s Insomniac in the ‘50s, a place where writers wrote, musicians performed, and artists exhibited their paintings. But he wasn’t stuck in the past. With the advent of wifi in 2000, Java Man became a shared work space. Shared work space chains have since bloomed and…
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