Berwyn, Illinois · since 2023
A coffee shop on Ridgeland Avenue with a pink owl over the door.
The espresso machine at 2713 Ridgeland Avenue is older than the cafe around it. A crepe shop ran this storefront first, and when Alex Herrera took the lease in the spring of 2023, the machine stayed behind. It still pulls every shot in the building.
Pink Owl opened that October. Alex is a photographer by trade, from Durango, and has lived between Berwyn and Cicero for more than twenty years. The owl on the wall comes from a plan he never finished. Lawyers in Mexico keep an owl in the office, and law was the job he set out for. He kept the owl and painted it pink, the color he has worn since he was shooting jaripeos.
The place has grown into the building. A second room opened next door, local work hangs on the brick, and there is a patio out back. Pilates some evenings, regional mexicana most of the day, dogs welcome at any hour.
In the press
Jonathan Torres sat down with Alex for Cicero Independiente and wrote all of it down: the owl, Durango, the twenty years here, and how a photographer with almost nothing saved ended up with this storefront.
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