From Coffeehouse To Tourist Trap

Java Cabana celebrates five years of kitschy evolution.

by Jim Hanas

hat do Susan Saran-don, Kate Moss, and Slash have in common? Or how about VH1, Hard Copy, and Good Morning America? Or Vogue, People, and Newsweek?
Answer: They have all either hung out at, taped footage in, or spilled ink on Java Cabana, the Cooper-Young coffeehouse-cum-kitschy tourist attraction that opened its doors five year ago Thursday. In that time, Java has gone from a furniture store that also sells c

PHOTO BY ROY CAJERO

offee to a coffeehouse that also does weddings.
“We just evolved,” explains Java’s owner, Tommy Foster. “I quit selling the furniture because I needed it, and the coffee started selling more.”
But Java’s evolution didn’t end there. The coin-op “kinetic art” whatdayacallit in the front window known as the First Church of the Elvis Impersonator was up and running in time for Death Week ’93, and the Viva Memphis Wedding Chapel in the back room began joining couples amid impersonator hoopla the following Valentine’s Day.
Between Church (which Foster says pays his rent) and Chapel (where 184 legal weddings have been performed to date thanks to the power vested in Foster by a mail-order ordination from the back of the National Enquirer), Java has become something of an institution, with tourists and journalists alike beating a path off the beaten path to its door.
“You go to Beale Street, you go to Graceland, do a couple other little things,” says Foster. “And you come and stick a quarter in the First Church of the Elvis Impersonator.”
And if you’re an out-of-town journalist sent to Memphis on a Death Week assignment, then you go in and talk to “the Reverend.” Foster says he gave three or four interviews a day during this year’s Elvis festivities. And if it’s the Reverend the press wants, it’s the Reverend Foster gives them, decked out in a found Harvard graduation robe with lightning-bolts sewn onto it.
“Sometimes I just try to get even weirder just for the fun of it, because I’m making fun of it to begin with,” he says. “And it’s like they love it. I can’t even hardly offend anybody. That’s what they want.”
In other words, Java Cabana’s appeal is in the eye of the beholder. Cynical ironists discover in it a needed counterpoint to the “official” hype, while diehard fans see in Foster one of their own, sometimes even offering, in all earnestness, to take some of the tongue-in-cheek memorabilia – such as a napkin boosted from the Blues Ball smeared with Lisa Marie’s lipstick – off his hands.
As for strange happenings during the last five years, Foster says that “some of the weirdest [weddings] are the ones that aren’t wild.”
“A lot of people,” he says, “they come down here from Ohio or they come here all the way from England, and they want to get married by an Elvis impersonator. A lot of these couples come down here and you think it’s just going to be hilarious, and I swear to God they just stand there. It’s really weird how serious they take the wedding itself, but yet look at the environment that they’re getting married in.”
Occasionally, couples take a look at that environment and decide better of it, proving that there are at least some Elvis fans who are not amused.
“I’ve had about three or four people that booked weddings six months in advance,” says Foster. “They’re diehard Elvis fans, showed up here with their flowers, ready to go, walked in this place and turned around and walked out and got in their car and drove away. It just wasn’t what they thought it would be.”
So much for pleasing everyone.
The addition of Java to the local tourist itinerary, however, has brought other perks with it. In the last year, Foster has built three installations based on his front window for House of Blues locations in Orlando and Myrtle Beach, and he’s even talking about expanding.
“I want to have a wedding chapel, and I want to have a reception room,” he says. “One day, I’m hoping to find a cool little church for rent or for sale that I can move into just for that.”
In it, he envisions a mass wedding – a la Reverend Moon – where all the couples that have been joined at Java can renew their vows.
For now, however, it’s time to celebrate five years of Death Week pilgrims, Valentine’s Day Wedding-O-Ramas, Thursday-night poetry readings, and an untold number of quarters dropped to watch the impersonators fly. In what Foster describes as a “Christmas luau” inspired by Elvis’ Blue Hawaii, Java Cabana will host a party this Saturday to observe its anniversary.
“I just took my last little bit of savings, opened it up, and survived five years,” Foster says with a sense of relief. “This would all be in my bathroom if I was at home.” n

Java Cabana
5th Anniversary Celebration
8 p.m. Saturday, November 29th
Music by the Continentals

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