• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Travel Feeds the Soul of Starving Artist: Snack Bar Owner, Painter Provocateur Takes Staff With Him

Posted on: Wednesday, 4 January 2006, 12:00 CST

By Malcolm Garcia, The Kansas City Star, Mo., The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Jan. 4--"I want to break the stereotype of the starving artist. I'm not afraid of work."

David Ford

He had always traveled.

He was born in North Kansas City, raised in upstate New York. Dropped out of school at 15 and returned to Kansas City to be closer to the rest of his family. Aunts, uncles. That really didn't work out. The getting closer part.

But David Ford stayed, pursued his passion in art, created paintings with hectic, thick brush strokes and used cultural icons as emblems of what society values and fears. He garnered a name as an art provocateur.

He also hitchhiked across the country, sold magazines door to door, drove a cab, worked construction. All this too, as he considers it now, was a form of travel -- an exposure to different people, different neighborhoods, different ideas even if they were just blocks from where he lived.

So it was not too much of a stretch when, in 1998, he bought Y J's Snack Bar at 128 W. 18th St. and expanded his eclectic notions of travel to include overseas excursions with his staff.

Seated at a table near a red piano, David hovers over a bowl of gumbo and shrugs off the seven international jaunts he and his staff have taken together as no more out of the ordinary than barbecue. The first trip was blessed with serendipity. He sold a piece of art, got excited, had some cash and said, Let's lock up and go to Mexico. Something like that anyway. He really doesn't remember. What matters is they went.

"You really ought to try this gumbo," he says and adjusts the blue bandanna around his forehead. A suede leather vest offsets only slightly the brightness of his orange shirt. Light glints off the silver earrings in his left ear. At 41, not a hint of gray anywhere in his brown hair, trimmed beard.

"Really," he insists about the gumbo, above the rock music pulsing overhead just loud enough so that he has to raise his voice. "I serve what I like to eat. Real butter. Real maple syrup. We're a joint. You sit with people you don't know. Music won't be streamed in by satellite. We scare off a lot of people."

This month, he and six of his staff will visit Mexico for the Festival of San Sebastian in Zinacantan, Chiapas. Festivities include thousands of dancers with rattles, costumed from head to toe, wearing wooden masks made to look like European faces along with enormous wigs made from the maguey cactus. He has no plans other than to get there, hang out and experience whatever comes before him.

David was turned on to Chiapas years ago by art collectors who held a romantic reverence for its people and culture. Since then, his travels in Mexico and Central America have influenced his art. Above Y J's, in his cavernous, sparsely furnished loft where a mastiff walks the halls, several of the brightly colored paintings have a distinct Latin flavor.

He bought the snack bar when he saw a "for sale" sign in the window one morning after he came downstairs. Five friends ponied up loans of $1,500 to $2,000 apiece. David agreed to pay them 40 percent interest. It made sense. He suffered a double hernia from his construction job and needed other work that would keep him close to home and his art. He had been feeding 20 artists a week out of his loft. Why not?

He now owns the red brick building that houses Y J's. He rents space to a soap manufacturing company, a yoga studio and a women's clothing boutique, among other businesses.

"I want to break the stereotype of the starving artist. I'm not afraid of work."

The trips abroad don't cost much. He puts aside 25 cents for every hour each of his staff works. Most of them are artists, ceramicists, poets and musicians. They must work for Y J's at least a year to be eligible for the trips, but if they take time off to tour or do a gig, he doesn't mind. He appreciates black sheep.

A quarter an hour adds up. Even if some staff work only 25 to 30 hours a week, David usually saves enough on their behalf for an airline ticket to a Third World country. Six, seven hundred dollars. If he's a little short, he'll sell more art, strong-arm one of his patrons, flip out the plastic. Something. One way or the other they'll go. If staffers choose not to travel, they keep the cash.

"Sorry, we're out of cookies," he tells a regular. "I'll be getting them in soon."

David has taken staff to Mexico, Guatemala and Morocco. Some of them had never left the Midwest, let alone the country. To be together outside the job humanizes them beyond their roles at Y J's.

As he sees it, the trips help him retain staff and hire people who seek intellectual stimulation, who feel compelled to break the bonds of routine existence and interact with the world.

On the road, he and his colleagues adopt a "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" attitude. One year, he took staff to the Winter Solstice Festival in Chichicastenango, Guatemala. Men dressed as bulls and firecrackers ignited in crowds. Drinking, they were told, was a means to feel at one with God. By the second day of the festival, the streets were filled with people passed out. The level of revelry and communion was very deep, very hip, very cool.

"You broaden your thinking. You learn to think differently. To see music, hear sculpture."

A few staff who opted out of this year's trip will keep Y J's open for the morning crowd. David won't abandon his coffee junkies. When he returns, he'll pick up where he left off. Get up at 5:30 a.m. to fry bacon and get breakfast ready for the morning crowd that starts filtering in about two hours later. He'll share stories from his trip before he leaves for his art studio at 17th and Campbell streets.

At some point, he'll figure expenses and wonder why, at 41, is he still depositing single dollar bills into his bank account.

But the snack bar was never intended to make a lot of money. He had to convince the IRS of that recently after a 17-month audit. He aroused the agency's suspicion because he had stayed open despite losing money three years in a row. He was off just $320 in a 6 ½-year period. He doesn't do computers. All his accounting was in long hand. The auditors freaked.

Why do you do this? they kept asking him. Keep a business that loses money?

Come on down and hear this 70-year-old man jam on the piano, he told them. You'll see. Come on down and join us on one of our trips. Live life. Encompass life. You'll see.

------------

To reach Malcolm Garcia, call (816) 234-4328 or send e-mail to mgarcia@kcstar.com .

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)

More News in this Category