Intersection

[Coffee] Outside the Lines

Does the future of Vegas art involve Nutella lattés?

Julie Seabaugh

Aaron Schropp is a multitasker. In one evening as co-founder of the three-month-old Canvas Café, he mans the register, brews tea, runs the soundboard for the acoustic-guitar acts setting the mood in a front corner, delivers Nutella lattes and discusses at length his passion for the Grateful Dead. Having studied escargot under Emeril Lagasse, vino in the wineries of Sonoma and Napa and waffles on the streets of Amsterdam, Schropp is also a proponent of the healthy, the organic, and the from-scratch.

Above all, he’s a forward-thinker, as his 76-capacity indoor/outdoor East Silverado Ranch establishment attests. There may be nothing like it in the area—or the city—at present, but he envisions a mini-chain of three or four Cafés down the road. “I’m a firm believer that if you take care of the artist and you take care of the community, they’re going to support you,” he offers, referring to the three 6-by-8-foot panels of local art adorning the chocolate and terra cotta walls. The displays rotate every six to eight weeks, and re-creations of each will form a scrapbook, which Schropp hopes to turn into a sort of yearbook, and finally into a coffee-table book.

As for why a venue/coffee shop/gallery boasting a dozen paninis named after master painters exists outside the Arts District, Schropp also proves himself a man of exceptional candidness. “I don’t look at competition. I look at cooperation,” he says. “If there’s something that’s geared toward helping art and poetry and music, why can’t we work together on building culture in this city? What I’m really worried about—and this is why I built the café here—is that the Arts District is in danger. In the next five or six years they’re going to have their backs up against the wall, and if I can create a place that’s off the Strip, that’s away from Downtown, when they reorganize and they need to find a new home, hopefully we can be a satellite. We can be a home for these people.”

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