By Cliff Lewis

Some might assume that all of the cultural hot spots of Downtown Lancaster exist within a few blocks of Penn Square—surely the culture ends by the time you hit Mulberry St, right? Wrong. Cozily tucked into an historic, 315 W King St, stone row home, La Costeña Restaurant prepares some of the most diverse and palate-expanding dishes that the city has to offer.

Before visitors place their order, the table is fixed with little bowls of canchita, salted puffs of corn that can best be described as “inverted popcorn.” (You won’t understand until you try it.) This free appetizer provides a good preface for the quality of La Costeña’s menu: It touches on American culinary expectations, but always pushes flavors into delightfully uncharted territory.

The selection of entrées deals significantly with seafood, or “mariscos.” One of these dishes is “Parihuela,” a wide bowl of talapia, scallops, shrimp, mussels, and lobster claws in a spicy broth of onions and Peruvian seasonings. The menu also provides a strong selection of chicken and steak items, most notable for the heavy and freshly spiced sauces used in their preparation.

What La Costeña offers is a rich and affectionately crafted cultural experience. One cannot enter this establishment without gathering the sense that a very unique heritage is being guarded behind these stony Lancaster walls. The Peruvian experience is well worth walking the extra blocks—and it sure beats buying a plane ticket.

Tomorrow night, the Theater of the Seventh Sister (438 N Queen Street) will host the 2009 Rumschpringe Short Film Festival. The showing will feature 14 local films, each less than ten minutes in length. Categories include Drama, Comedy, Music Video, Animation, and Family.

The festival, currently in its second annual run, will be screened throughout the weekend at the following times:

• Thursday at 7pm and 9:30pm
• Friday at 3pm, 7pm, and 9:30pm
• Saturday at 3pm, 7pm, and 9:30pm

Tickets will cost $9 for evening screenings and $6 for the 3pm matinee screenings. Award winners will be formally announced at the Thursday night premier.

It was the first First Friday of Spring ‘09, and Downtown Lancaster was stirring with hints of the bustle to come in the warmer months ahead. At the Prince Street crosswalk near the Pennsylvania Academy of Music, a horse-mounted police officer had to direct the dense streams of artwalkers that concentrated along Gallery Row.

The evening’s weather was certainly a powerful draw, even if it did require a light jacket.

The City’s more eye-catching displays were found at the Infantree Gallery (21 N Prince, 4th floor), Metropolis (154 N Prince St), and the Lancaster Museum of Art (135 N Lime St). The Infantree displayed “Out There” an exhibit defined by muted colors and some ironic interactions between pop culture and wild nature.

A Strasburg resident and recent Tyler School of Art graduate commented that the art in galleries like the Infantree is “more than just an image, as opposed to a lot of the galleries in Lancaster. It’s not just about what’s ‘there,’ but there’s something deeper than that. And they explore a lot more mediums and ways of creating images.”

“Moist. Mammal. Doom” was displayed at Metropolis and carried the gallery’s propensity toward the colorful, the comic, and the grotesque. The Lancaster Museum of Art featured the work of illustrator Barry Moser in an exhibit titled “Portraits of Illustrious Persons.” More can be read about this exhibit in this post from Daniel Klotz’s local culture blog.

The night was rife with creative activity on a variety of fronts. Jazz pianist Matthew Monticchio held his usual roost at the Christiane David Gallery while several street guitarists strummed along the sidewalks of Prince.

Up at the 300 block of North Queen, Building Character hosted fire-spinning to the thumping beats of a live DJ. Across the street, at the newly opened Progressive Galleries, the Harrisburg-based band Smoke the Groove spread their funky tunes among the hanging displays.

The rush of incoming visitors was a boon to Downtown businesses, as is usually the case on such evenings. Around 10pm, a line stretched onto the sidewalk at 23 N Prince as dozens of patrons waited for ice cream at Carmen and David’s Creamery. Max Garcia-Hommel, who manages his parent’s recently opened shop, noted that things had been this busy since the early evening. Garcia-Hommel commented that it certainly makes up for the winter’s frigid effect upon patronage.

By Cliff Lewis

In late 2005, Keith and Crystal Weaver; Dave and Carol Witmer; Kevin and Valentina Weaver; and Ed and Joan McManness all put their heads together: “We all had a very common vision,” Crystal Weaver explains, “and that was to provide a place where people could come hang out and not feel like they just needed to move along…. We wanted a place that was well-done, that felt like someone had put some time, energy, and quality into it.”

Ever since the Prince Street Café’s opening in August of 2006, this vision has been tremendously successful. People often ask Weaver if business has dropped in the current recession, but the fact is the Café just experienced its busiest winter yet: “It’s been on the incline ever since we moved in. I don’t think we’ve leveled off. I keep thinking, ‘By now the hype should be over and it should level off…’ But things haven’t slowed down yet.”

Another early purpose for the Café was to bring more people Downtown, “for people outside the city to come in and start to feel comfortable in the city and feel safe in it.” Weaver, who was raised on a farm in Centerville, said that most of the people she grew up with were afraid to come Downtown. Today, Weaver estimates that her Lancaster City business receives more than half of its traffic from people outside city limits.

According to Marshall Snively, Deputy Director of the James Street Improvement District (which includes the Downtown Investment District), the city has collected a younger, more “hip” crowd in recent years. The pattern cannot be directly traced to the arrival of the Prince Street Café, but the Café’s success is certainly emblematic of the trend.

For Lancaster’s city-goers and city-dwellers, the Prince Street Café provides a winning combination of quality and affordability. It isn’t the quintessential “Ritz,” but it isn’t a hole-in-the-wall, either. Although the concept of affordable quality appears obvious enough, Weaver believes this is something that the city could use more of: “I think there’s a need for a place that is mid-range—nice, but not really expensive.”

It took eight owners and a great idea to start up Lancaster City’s Prince Street Café—a business that now stands as a parable to how a strong vision can go a long way when enough people put their heads and wallets together. And, after all, isn’t that what cities are all about?

The Café is located at 15 N. Prince St and is open from 6:30am to 11pm on Monday through Thursday, and perpetually from 6:30am Friday to 3:30pm Sunday.