Good evening! This week, and every Wednesday, we'll be featuring our famous Cafe Du Monde New Orleans chicory ("Best coffee in the world") as well as a delicious section of other coffees! $2.50 Endless Mug! Also candles, incense, t-shirts, sage, tons of books, DVDs, unique gifts, new challengers for the chess tournament, wireless internet, Tarot readings, stage magic, and guest artist appearances from our various hotel projects. A perfect place to hide away in a booth and read for hours. Anyone curious, please, feel free to stop in and snoop around. Enchantment abounds. Wednesdays, doors swing open 4pm, closing around midnight.
Last night, a live raven...
We now have Black Cat Catnip! Our own Grand Midway Hotel brand of extra fine catnip!
Best catnip in the world! Put a spell on your cat!
HOTEL HOME TO UNUSUAL COFFEE SHOP
-DAN DiPAOLO
Daily American Sunday August 20, 2011
The Grand Midway Hotel in Windber has long been a haven for artists and unusual events like a Jack Kerouac festival or even the primary location for a zombie movie. Now owner Blair Murphy is opening the doors every Wednesday for a Halloween-themed coffee shop-style business.
“This really isn’t a financially oriented business,” Murphy says from behind the main room’s 40-foot-long bar.
His girlfriend, Deanna Kane — sporting a costume that includes bat wings — agrees. “We’re trying to bring a little magic to the area. Just giving people a chance to escape,” she says.
Like all things taking place at the Grand Midway Hotel a simple description is inadequate.
There is a coffee shop feel to the place, certainly. The smell of New Orleans’ famous Cafe Du Monde coffee wafts through the air, mixing with coconut-scented incense. A row of booths lines the outside wall and racks of books bump against the walls. Snacks, catnip, T-shirts, candles and games are all on display for sale. Chess sets sit on the tables of many of the booths and then it all gets a little surreal. There’s a touch of carnival freak show in the jars of (fake) preserved animals on the bar top and in the skeletons lining the wall. A Fairy Triad garden kit and a Witches’ Woods terrarium can be found along with voodoo dolls and a rubber head floating in a crystal ball. The head is (probably) not for sale. The menu informs that tonight’s moon is waning gibbous and the program includes a partial screening of a film project Murphy is working on.
A few people play chess in a booth. Another small group discusses a piece of art one of them is showing and has recently completed. Syn Berns is sitting in a back booth ready to give tarot card readings to the adventurous or just plain curious. “It’s nice to see a group of people like this getting together,” Kane says.
Wednesday Nights at the Grand Midway Hotel also gives the couple a joint project to work on, Murphy says. “Our schedules are so different. It was a way to give one day a week toward doing something together like a hobby,” he says.
The evenings — which run from 4 p.m. to midnight — will feature different artists, coffee, music and incense every week.