For more than two decades, the Little Spot Cafe has survived everything the Mission district has thrown at it — until now.
The cafe, at 23rd Street and Van Ness Avenue, has long served coffee, bagels, and sandwiches alongside a $2 bin of vinyl, cassettes, DVDs, books, and Japanese manga. Its patrons have tended to be older and less moneyed than those that patronize Ritual Coffee about five blocks away, according to owner Ken Kurita, age 56. Many of them have stopped to pet his dog, Kit-Kat, who often joined him at the cafe over the years.
“I mean at some point it almost looked like a geriatric ward, you know, I had like old folks napping in the sun, and what are you going to do, wake them up? It’s kind of amazing to see that, in such an urban setting, people just falling asleep in public,” Kurita told Gazetteer SF.
It was for moments like that, he added, that he kept the Little Spot going. “Which is a luxury, you know. I don't want to sound like I’m whining about it, because it was beautiful.”
Last week, Kurita posted a sign in the window announcing the closure, which he says is imminent. The note, which was posted on social media this week, blames the building’s landlord, who is forcing him out by terminating a month to month lease; it also acknowledges larger forces at work, including the corrosive forces of gentrification that have bleached the Mission and San Francisco of its color and character.
“We are closing,” reads the explanation, which outlines (in colorful detail) the alleged motivation of the “greedy slumlords” who Kurita says finally brought an end to Little Spot’s long run. The cafe will remain open for about one more week, he said.
Shawn Yee, the son of the building’s owner, Jane Yee, told Gazetteer that he lawfully terminated the month-to-month lease because Kurita has been consistently late paying his month for at least one year, requiring him to pay a process server to extract it every month.
“I was late a few times,” Kurita acknowledged. “It’s been pretty hard since the pandemic, but they’ve always received their rent.”
Owning a cafe in San Francisco was a childhood dream come true for Kurita. In his note, he expresses gratitude for being able to keep the business going through the transformation of the Mission, listing developments that ring both true and remarkable to anyone who has spent time in the neighborhood over the last decade or two.
“The dot com and the real estate rush, the gentrification and monochromatizing of the once diverse neighborhoods. Protest marches, Bike lanes, hipsters, fixies, mustaches, tech buses, Covid-19,” the sign reads.
Kit-Kat hasn’t been at the cafe for a while, Kurita told Gazetteer. She’s about 19 years old now, and blind. She’ll likely make one more appearance before Little Spot closes its doors for good.
“The city kind of breaks your heart in the end,” Kurita said. “You pour all this effort in, you do what you think is the right thing. In the end, it’s like the people who are interested in turning this into a money-making venture, they kinda call the shots in the city now.”
