Garden is a rather long street in San Luis Obispo, California.  Beginning in the residential neighborhoods, it fires along a straight path downtown, past cell phone dealers and cellulite removers, before landing among the trees shadowing Linnaea’s Café.  How fitting that Linnaea’s is as diverse as the very street on which it stands, welcoming the old and the new, the baked and the brewed, in a friendly, open atmosphere.
Linnaea’s rests in a deep, narrow property next to a salon.  Stepping in off the street, one first encounters a window splashed with dozens of colorful posters for various local bands and events, and then, through a (similarly covered) low door, a high ceilinged room, and the barstools and table of the tiny front area by the counter.  Patrons are welcomed into the society of Linnaea’s by whichever of many regulars perch here: social, vociferous, and opinionated.  The window can open up to the street and conversations often spill out to the hippies, dog lovers or punk kids hanging out on the sidewalk.  Today, a coquettish brown-haired woman discuss politics at high volume with each other, the staff, and whoever comes in the door or stands in line, but no one shushes her.
Dominating the people, however, is the counter with its massive chalkboard menus hanging above it.  This lists a veritable cornucopia of anything and everything a coffeehouse could serve, from soymilk for lattes, to teecciino, a caffeine-free herbal coffee substitute, to free trade organic coffees and teas.  Their pastries are homemade in the off-site kitchen they share with a local cookie store, and include more variety than your average Starbucks could provide.  Similarly the breakfasts roam from waffles to “espresso eggs,” a meal that fittingly includes cooking eggs with an espresso machine.  All their lunch specials, which vary by the day, are vegetarian.  Their silverware, which live in mugs on the opposite wall, are almost entirely mismatched, letting each patron pick the fork that best fits their mood, be it simple or frilly or big or small.  They even have a special mug of long-handle spoons for stirring large coffees all the way to the bottom.
Down the thin hallway, the hardwood gives way to the dark, leafy patterned carpet of the back room.  The back room is bigger than the front: much bigger, in fact, with twelve tables, a bookcase, a piano, and a small stage.  The bookcase houses books and games, including an algebra textbook, a “Child-Library Reader” printed in 1925 (the inside cover signed with gift messages from both 1936 and 1969), photo albums featuring the history of the café, novels of varying tastes and qualities, the Encyclopedia Britannica, an Unabridged Dictionary, and a basket of mismatched chess pieces.  In the opposite corner, the aged upright piano sits by the back door with a magazine basket on top.  If you ask politely at the counter, they may let you play it, even though it is dreadfully out of tune.  In this room, the patrons are both more retiring and more varied.  Here you have students studying, couples conversing, businesspeople working their laptops, and of course, the riverstone man.
He is an old man, bald on top but with a long beard and a single dreadlock down to his waist to compensate.  Every day he sits at the same table with his big leather-bound book and his riverstone paperweights.  He writes in what appears to be a bizarre mixture of Russian, English, and Greek, with obscure mathematical notations thrown in for good measure.  He rarely speaks, but is more than willing to share an obscure joke, or tales of alien abductions, even if you don’t quite understand.  Though he often doesn’t even buy anything, at Linnaea’s he is never asked to leave, as he has been in many other local coffeehouses.
Besides being a refuge, the back room of Linnaea’s is also an art gallery, featuring a different artist every month.  The artists themselves, who usually wait about a year before their work is hung, can often be found hanging out in the café with friends and family who come to support their showing.  This month’s feature is photography, and the photographer and her fiancé sit at a table near the stage.  In addition to the display, the front wall houses four stylistically disparate paintings of the café, as well as dozens of charcoal sketches of various locals, including Linnaea’s namesake and founder, Linnaea Phillips.  
A reference librarian at Cuesta College Library with degrees in both Art History and English, Linnaea opened the café in 1984.  Linnaea is a goodhearted woman who is invested in making a positive impact on the community.  When the police began handing out loitering tickets to the indie kids who hung out in front of the café, she defended the kids, and ended up signing an agreement with the police and the kids to allow them to stay.  Although the café was bought by Marianne Olme in 2007, her beliefs and attitudes still form the backbone of what Linnaea’s means to both employees and customers.  
The stage in the back left corner is rather small, housing one table and two chairs when not in use in the evenings.  On Friday and Saturday nights, it is graced by performers of all kinds, from folk, rock and jazz, to poetry readings and open mic nights.  Performers are generally unpaid, save for the passing of the hat and a free drink and dessert.  Because the stage is so small, many groups spill out onto the floor, giving these performances a wonderful, intimate feeling.  Listeners from college students to grandparents sit within arm’s reach of the performers, and crowd interaction is less of a planned gimmick and more of a consequence of having one’s neighbor playing bass.  The crowds are as dazzling diverse as the diners, and a barefoot hippie can easily be found sitting next to a university professor with a salt-and-pepper combover. These performances (with the exception of certain special events on Sundays) never have a cover charge.
“Beginning as a classic '50s-style coffeehouse with Beatniks, espresso and folk performers,”  the demographic of customers gradually shifted to college students, and thus the music has shifted as well, to reflect the current patrons and staff.  Depending on the day and hour, the speakers in the café may be playing a Vivaldi String Quartet or a Led Zeppelin album, and from one night to the next the live entertainment could move from “acoustic (like Norah)” to “rophunkraehop” without skipping a beat.
Between the stage and the piano is a door with a sign saying “No Smoking In Garden.”  Behind this door, appropriately enough, is a lovely patio garden, with tables and a fishpond, surrounded on all sides by walls high enough to keep out traffic noise, and lined with vibrant ivy and ferns.  Children can run and play and peer into the water to find the fish maneuvering through the reeds.  A tiny pink table and two matching chairs sit ready for underage occupants.  It is not uncommon for the garden to echo with the laughter of children, or the splash as a younger one tries to touch the fish.  The pond is guarded by a stone statue of a frog, and looked over by several large welded iron flowers, mingling with the living reeds and ivy.
The garden is paved with bricks, many of which are marked with the word “Peace” in various languages, and one if which is engraved with the message “To Linnaea, Good Luck!  With Love, Mike + Tony.”  The entire café might as well have been dedicated “To San Luis Obispo, Good Luck!  With Love, Linnaea Phillips.”  Her creation is a haven for the artists and the appreciators, the children and the elderly, the bohemians and the madmen.