The Elmwood Café in Berkeley has closed its doors, putting to rest a label put on it from three years ago.
"I think the closure has everything to do with this establishment being racist,” said Berkeley resident Lynn Nice.
That label was put on the café three years ago after Bay Area native and comedian W. Kamau Bell said his wife Melissa Bell, a white woman, was sitting outside the Café when an employee, thinking he was harassing her, told him to move along.
"I wanted to run away. I was actually strangely embarrassed, as if I had done something wrong," Bell wrote about the experience in a blog post on Jan. 28, 2015, two days after the incident occured on his birthday.
The owner of the Elmwood Café Michael Pearce said efforts were made to rectify the incident but "we ultimately failed."
"And for that, we are deeply sorry. The mission of Elmwood Café has always been about supporting our community and celebrating its diversity," the owner said in a statement.
Bell wrote about the 2015 incident again after he saw the arrest of two black men at a Starbucks in Philadelphia.
Local
Bell said in an op-ed to Berkeleyside that whatever the reason the shop closed, the Elmwood Café missed a real opportunity to be a force for change in Berkeley.
"So I shed no tears nor do I hold a celebration at the closing of the Elmwood Café,” Bell wrote.
