From Daily Grind to...Daily Grind....

Steve Baluzy has had a tough day at the office. He's been working long hours at his accounting job and he's done for the day... meaning it's nice to drop in at a comfortable coffee house, see some friends and family, have a drink, chill.

Only Baluzy can't quite do that here at the Blue Z Coffeehouse in Newtown, where I met him, because he's the owner. "Two jobs," he says. "At 55 I should be slowing down — it's like the movie Cocoon, I'm going backwards!" He's laughing, of course, quickly adding, "I truly love it here. What a great way to go broke!"

The Blue Z, on Route 25 less than two miles south of Newtown's Main Street flagpole, has been open about 18 months. "A week after I signed the lease," Baluzy says, "the market crashed" — not an auspicious beginning, especially after he learned how restrictive "signage" rules are on state highways. He'd have to depend largely on word-of-mouth... which meant becoming a community center, whether he wanted to or not. That's evident from the number of fund-raisers held here, including the "Haiti Relief Variety Show," scheduled for Friday, April 30, 5–6:30, and put on by fifth- and sixth-graders at the Trinity Church School. ("Admission is free," the flyer says, "but donations will be accepted" for the rebuilding of the severely damaged Good Samaritan School in Carrefour, Haiti.)

"My business plan had me very rich by now," Baluzy says, with more humor than regret. "It's a tough business, and I went into it very optimistic." Long-term, though, that may work in his favor, because the place has character, resembling a coffee house in a college town rather than a bedroom community or horse country. "I didn't have any model," he says. "The décor just evolved" — with significant input from (and execution by) his daugher, Lauren, who runs the place. The counters Baluzy bought on eBay, as he did the refrigerator ("some guy in Utah"); most of the actual coffee equipment came from Gloria Jean's Coffee at the Danbury Mall when it went out of business. "Only the tables and chairs are new," Steve says proudly, pointing out that the chairs are padded. "We want people to be comfortable."

The coffee's fine — Steve and Lauren and a few other relatives took a coffee course in New York City to learn the ropes — but the place is most notablefor its art-and-music vibe (plus the magazine-ad-and-photo-spread wallpapering in the bathroom). Every month the artwork on the walls changes; it's curated by Adam Zuckerman, who runs A-Z Museum Services out of Sandy Hook, and the art is both interesting and high quality. (Zuckerman also puts together Blue Z's monthly Motorcycle Night.) 

Music? Weekends, both Friday and Saturday, and sometimes Sunday. "There are a lot of good musicians around," says Steve, "and they just want a place to play. We try to help artists out as best we can."  He's discovered that out-of-the-area musicians often can't deliver a core audience, which sometimes leaves Baluzy (who lives on Obtuse Road South near the old Burr Farm, now Shakespeare's Garden)," exhausted from clapping."

Although the Baluzy family (Syrian by lineage) has a history in restaurants — Steve's uncle owns the Sesame Seed in Danbury, and Steve was his first waiter — serving hot food at the coffeehouse was something he "tried to avoid like the plague." But music meant evening hours, and thus beer and wine... and business has indeed picked up since the liquor license was approved in late 2009.  And the expansion hasn't stopped there: Baluzy's girlfriend, Rachel Jones of the Westchester-based Axial Theatre Company, has conducted acting classes at the coffeehouse and a local artist has taught a life-drawing class.  Ongoing events include open-mike nights, poetry readings and soon — horrors — even karaoke. "I've learned not to judge anything," says Baluzy, who has worked for Goodrich (nope, no relation to this writer)  in Danbury for 30 years. "I mean, if Picasso had come in here with his stuff...."

That things are still tough in the cafe business was made evident by the recent report in Newtown Patch that Sandy Hook's Mocha Coffeehouse may close in June. Baluzy isn't happy about that, knowing people who start coffee houses are independent souls much like him, motivated largely by the desire to create a place where they can hang out with friends, and make new ones. "I just like the feel of coffee places like this," says Baluzy. "I'm living vicariously through the people who come through that door."  Indeed, he says, it's been "a labor of love..." which must be obvious, he adds, since he's "still driving a Geo Prizm with 150,000 miles on it."