A Blended Version of the Truth
By Laura Oppenheimer in Food on Apr 24, 2007 3:30PM
Chicago blogs were all abuzz last week with news about recently-opened East Village coffee shop bLENd.
The simplest version of the story (as we read on The Food Chain) is that bLENd is owned by a founder of the abstinence-only education group Project Reality. We thought this was pretty interesting on a number of levels (not insignificantly the amount of media it has received) so we decided to get in touch with bLENd part-owner and Event Coordinator Johan Khalilian to find out what the connection is.
Khalilian broke it down for us: "In all honesty, Project Reality has no connection with bLENd. They do not fund us, we do not fund them. We have no intent on funding them or anything abstinence related, they have no intent on funding us." So where does the confusion come from? Why is everyone crying wolf?
Khalilian told us that he has done work with Project Reality "as a speaker on healthy choices and abstinence." Beyond that, he said that "there is no affiliation with what we are doing at bLENd. There are certain people who have just assumed, because of my stance on abstinence, that bLENd is affiliated in some way shape or form. That assumption is false."
We can see why people might make the connection though. bLENd's website has a decent amount of what Chicagoist's dad might call "California psychobabble." From the site:
Our journey is undoubtedly a spiritual endeavor. We seek to engage the very fabric of our pluralistic society and create a marketplace where life-changing conversations can occur with individuals from every walk of life... It is love that fuels us. Love for God and love for others. We understand that there is nothing more vital than this truth. When all else fails, we love. How will we do it? By creating a “third place,” a place to enjoy outside of work and home, a coffee shop where more than coffee is poured out, a healthy social environment where people from diverse backgrounds can connect and develop authentic community. This “third place” will be known as bLENd.
Coffee with a mission. It may not be our mission, but from what Khalilian says, it isn't Project Reality's mission either.
Image via bLENd.