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Melting pot pours into a coffee pot

Hernando County has been craving a coffeehouse. Welcome to Brooksville's hip Rising Sun Cafe, where all backgrounds hang.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published June 27, 2005

	[Times photo: Edmund Fountain]
	From left, Alexis Ousley, 12, of Birmingham, Ala., blows a bubble with her gum while friend Kelsey Bolesta, 13, of Brooksville tries to pop 10-year-old brother Carter's bubble with a pen. The three enjoyed Friday night at the new Rising Sun Cafe in Brooksville.

BROOKSVILLE - Here, in quick, slide-show form, is the first few weeks in this small city's new downtown coffeehouse, the Rising Sun Cafe:

A man with gray hair doing a crossword in the early morning on a Monday.

Kim McDaniel and Terri Mossgrove, stay-at-home moms, knitting - how very urban, chic and hip - in the evening on a Tuesday.

George Welsted, 20, and Brittany Grubbs, 19, boyfriend-girlfriend, hanging out on the couch in the corner with a laptop during open mike night after dark on a Friday.

Now here's the question:

Where in this state is there a consistent, meaningful, nonconfrontational overlap of the old and the young, locals and newbies, Old South and New Florida?

And Wal-Mart doesn't count.

It is, some might say, the question within the demographic hodgepodge that makes up so much of always-growing Hernando County - even, really, the question in the last half century from the Panhandle to the Keys.

Forgive Lisa Johnson and Sallie Rice, co-owners of the Rising Sun, for being so bold, but they think they've got an answer in the form of a coffee shop.

"The idea," Rice said, "is to take what's new and trendy and make it fit here."

Heck of an idea.

Quite a task too.

Start, though, with the two of them. Johnson is born-and-bred Brooksville. Rice is from Philadelphia via Tampa and has been here all of six months.

But they met through church at the Brooksville Assembly of God. They became friends like sisters and now they're in this together.

The high tin-mold ceilings and the vintage brick walls inside the cafe say this is what some folks around here would call "Old Brooksville."

As for the chichi coffee and the evening entertainment and the free wireless Web?

That's new.

The history of coffeehouses in this area - well, the history's almost a nonhistory. And what history there is isn't real good.

Javatrapolis in Spring Hill: closed. The Donut Stop in Brooksville: closed. The place people kind of remember being in the strip shopping center out by Publix on U.S. 41: closed.

The Java Bean, which opened just over a year ago, is in the Coastal Way Shopping Plaza on State Route 50, near a Dunkin' Donuts.

Starbucks is said to be on the way soon.

Other than that?

Mostly gas stations and greasy spoons.

It's not a coffeehouse sort of place, old-timers say.

So will the Rising Sun fly?

"I hope it does," said Joe Weeks, who has been working at Weeks Hardware downtown on North Main since he finished up at the University of Florida in 1951. "Brooksville needs a little boost of some kind."

Realtor Mary Ann DeWitt has been here a long time too and to the skeptics she said this:

"Have they looked at the growth we've had in I'd say the past five years? I think it's leaning toward the class of clientele that would go to a coffee shop."

"It's not that it's a coffeehouse," Johnson said. "It's the atmosphere in the coffeehouse that Brooksville needed."

And every trend has to start somewhere.

Here's why Johnson thinks this will work: This small town, she said, the place where she grew up, has had the problem of ain't-nothin'-to-do, especially after 5 and on the weekends, and especially for those who fall somewhere between middle school and married with kids.

This, she hopes, helps fill that gap.

What's to do in B'ville?

"Nothing," 14-year-old Hannah Spencer said.

Where do teens and 20-somethings hang out?

"At home," George Welsted said.

And if not at a house?

"At somebody else's house," said girlfriend Brittany Grubbs.

Or bowling, they say. Spring Hill Lanes. Maybe the movies.

"I'm racking my brain," said Jason Ford, who is 18.

The Rising Sun also, of course, is catty-corner from the courthouse and the county government center, which means it's close to a bunch of law offices and insurance agencies and municipal offices. Those 9-to-5ers drink coffee. Now they can get it close by.

"I get tired of waiting in line at Dunkin' Donuts," said Mike McHugh, the director of the Hernando County Office of Business Development, which is all of a block away. "Their coffee's good, but it ain't that good."

"They're filling two voids at the same time," Raymond Hess said of the Rising Sun.

Hess is redevelopment coordinator for the city of Brooksville.

"Obviously," he said, "I don't want to put too much pressure on them, but I think the success of this business - and I'm very confident it will succeed - will set an example" for other businesses to come in.

Johnson has been a manager in an office, a manager at Sonny's Bar-B-Q, even a chain saw sharpener, and for the last four years she had a housecleaning business. She sold that in April and decided to give it a go with a coffeehouse.

She has a business plan that's probably often overlooked.

"I listen to people," she said.

This is what she heard:

"It's something we've needed for a long time," City Manager Richard Anderson said.

Not only from him.

McDaniel, one of the knitters, is from Jacksonville, and her parents still live there. When they're here visiting and searching for some coffee, she said, "they were going to the McDonald's and the Hess station.

"So they'll be excited."

"There aren't many nice places to go and sit and hang out," said Mossgrove, McDaniel's knitting partner. "This has a certain cachet that Dunkin' Donuts lacks. Not that Dunkin' Donuts isn't a nice establishment - the drive-through is lovely - but ...

At the Rising Sun, Johnson and Rice are offering Gavina gourmet coffee and icy, whipped drinks - creamy, chocolatey or fruity - and salads and chicken wraps too.

The pastry case includes Rice's special banana cake, Johnson's pineapple upside-down cake and all sorts of fresh-baked brownies, made by Johnson's daughter, Cerease, who's 10.

Still to come: coupons off the almost-done Web site - www.risingsuncafe.com carpet for the stage, a finalized menu.

And more tables and chairs.

On Friday nights the past couple weeks, Johnson said, the crowd has been about 60 strong; Saturday nights have gotten up close to 100, and weekday traffic has been steady and sure.

All of which is building to this coming holiday weekend's official grand opening.

The older customers?

"They come in just to look at the brick walls," Rice said.

The younger kids?

They come later in the day and like to just hang.

"Where else could you get such a broad mix of ages?" Rice asked.

"We really wanted to have that community feel," Johnson said.

"We don't want people to feel like they're just walking into a store," Rice said. "We want them to feel like it's home."

Home.

For Brooksville, and even more for sprawling Spring Hill, and for the rest of a changing Hernando County - for Florida - that's a big idea.

Look at the different kinds of people in this new kind of place.

The slide show is growing here at the Rising Sun.

--Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified June 27, 2005, 01:05:15]