Where Cake Meets Indie Rock

"You guys, uh, sell music here too, right?" This question, shot along with a furtive glance by a twenty-something waiting for his coffee, is at once patently absurd and utterly forgivable. Cake Shop's name may deceive you, and if not, the thick slabs of the title desert lined up near the front windows certainly will. But, somewhere between the bakery display case, the hipster with the Snidley-Whiplash facial hair sipping tea, the wine-and-beer bar, and rows and rows of vintage vinyl, you begin to wonder just exactly where the hell you are.

Cake Shop is ostensibly designed to provoke that very reaction in its patrons: bewilderment, befuddled laughter, and, ultimately, deep, deep satisfaction. Nestled in the heart of the Lower East Side, amidst a slew of small music venues, the storefront offers what is quite possibly the most motley assortment of wares and entertainment that can be imagined. Andy Bodor, the founder, owner, and manager of the place, tried to help me wrap my mind around his creation. "Cake Shop," he explained, "is not a bakery, but a coffeehouse with record store in the back, and a bar and venue in the basement for extra fun. Pretty simple really. Problem is people wanted cake. With the name we chose, we can't blame them. So we got some cake too, now everyone is confused." Extra fun, maybe; pretty simple, I'm not so sure.

The confusing name, like everything else, is a flight of fancy: it is the title of one of Bodor's favorite songs by Swell Maps, "a UK situationist/art punk band." The coffee-house entrance radiates a quirky, neighborhood vibe, with clusters of patrons absorbed in conversation over cupcakes and coffee, and the occasional passerby ducking in to pick up something hot. Bodor is no stranger to this scene; he's owned Alt.Coffee in the East Village for ten years. But, he says, "what we played on the stereo at Alt is what most people seemed to comment on."

Cake Shop is not really a glorified coffee shop, then, but a true hybrid of delights, dreamt up by two self-described music obsessives, Bodor and Alt manager Greg Curley, who aimed to sell the music they loved and have their idols there in-house to jam live. Cake Shop's coffee counter thus quickly gives way to a record store as you continue to walk further back into the space. Bins are stocked with a wide assortment of vinyl, which includes everything from classic Beatles' albums to the inspirational life of Jimmy Swaggart rendered in glorious stereo. All this is found alongside a more modest collection of used CDs, 8-tracks, and Troma movies on VHS.

While you're perusing the back, though, you're missing the real action of Cake Shop, which is going on downstairs. Here, a long, dark room sporting a beer and wine bar (a liquor license is coming soon) plays host to an array of acts whose variety mirrors that of the Cake Shop itself. Dirt cheap shows, starting at six bucks and featuring a constantly changing line-up of underground rock, are an almost daily occurrence, interspersed with niche movie screenings, dance parties, and even a kids' story-time with milk and cookies.

What's in the Cake Shop's future? Bodor will barely speculate. "Chances are these pure ideals we have, and hope to have until we close, of opening a place purely situated on borderline otherworldly-some might say the essence of what makes a song great can only be sung, heard, and never explained-love of new and old music-new bands downstairs, old history upstairs-is more work than any of us realized, and I really don't want any of the 'magic' to be revealed." Chances are if it's anything like the rest of the magic Bodor has worked so far, it will be weird and absolutely brilliant.