‘Help Luna’s Cafe’: Donations pour in after break-in at Sacramento music, poetry venue
Luna’s Cafe and Juice Bar, a small but beloved art venue in midtown Sacramento that in normal times would be hosting poetry slams or live music a few times a week, suffered a break-in earlier this week.
Then, the community stepped up in a huge way.
Owner Art Luna wrote in a post to the business’s Facebook page that he pulled up to the 16th Street cafe Tuesday morning to find “a mess with broken glass strewn everywhere.” Police arrived quickly and helped board up the window, he wrote.
“There have been a recent rash of Smash and grabs overnight with local businesses during this pandemic,” Luna wrote, referring to shutdowns that have left small businesses and venues like his closed since mid-March. “Stupid people causing hundreds if not thousands of dollars in damage for little or no return...”
It wasn’t Luna himself but a writer and longtime supporter of the business who set up a GoFundMe page to raise money toward the broken windows and any stolen property.
The page was set up Tuesday with a goal of $1,000.
By midday Wednesday, more than 160 donors had combined to raise $7,000 in the first 24 hours.
Josh Fernandez, a professional writer who lauded Luna’s Cafe as “an escape from everything bad that our world has become” in an emotional call to action on the crowdfunding website, asked the community and local artists to pitch in.
“Art Luna works tirelessly to bring art, music, writing, culture, and food to our once small city that’s expanding into another faceless megacorporation,” he wrote. “Someone broke his window the other night and stole a bunch of stuff.
“Times are rough; people are desperate, I get it, but when someone breaks Art Luna’s window, we should help him fix it.”
This story was originally published May 13, 2020 at 8:12 AM.
