The Life Cafe

RENT COMES TO LIFE

Today Life Cafe has become the center of pilgrimage for large and small groups of Rentheads, as they’re known, from all over the United States and all over the world. Why do they come? To see the place where Jonathan Larson wrote Rent, to experience the actual place that was featured in the play and movie and to take a trip back in time to have for themselves an “original East Village Experience”, an original Rent Experience! 

Jonathan Larson frequented the East Village and he liked hanging out at Life Cafe, sipping coffee while watching, interviewing and writing. He observed the various groups of neighborhood people who regularly met at Life Cafe. Because, after all, there was never enough room in Lower East Side apartments or enough heat, or hot water. And sometimes there was no water at all. 

The last scene of act one in Rent takes place in Life Cafe. For Kathy Life, that scene is a direct replica of the motley group of locals sitting together on the antique bench who practically lived at Life Cafe, sipping endless cups of coffee while playing chess and sharing – uninvited or not – their philosophies of life and everything in between. That scene is a moving reminder of those that hung out at Life Cafe but are no longer with us. Most of them are gone from the neighborhood. Some of them have died of AIDS-related causes. Some of those people will always have a vivid place in Kathy Life’s memory. Billy Sleaze, for example. He was a larger-than-life-character, Life’s majordomo, who watched over Life and made sure trouble from the street was kept at bay. 

The story of RENT is one of the many stories in and around Life Cafe and our neighborhood. 

Since 1996, this powerful musical has been wowing legions of fans on Broadway.
Based on Puccini's famous opera, La Boheme, Rent won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 1996 Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Score and Best Book. 

Thank you Jonathan Larson!