The afternoon rays had driven away the clouds over 16th and Valencia streets, dousing the intersection with a welcome dose of pleasant, warm sunshine. There was no lack of activity outside Manny’s; the bus stop located directly outside and plentiful pedestrian traffic ensured that.
Inside, Manny Yekutiel, the 33-year-old owner of the bustling business, was anything but calm.
During our interview, he stopped himself just about every five minutes and spoke to someone — delivery workers dropping off packages, staff awaiting instructions, customers whom he greets with a smile.
A man pushing a cart of brown sandwich bags walks in the front door and overhears Yekutiel talking about growing up around Los Angeles. “I’m from around there as well!” the man chimes in. They both commiserate over their newly discovered common ground. Then it’s back to business: “I have another gig for you,” says Yekutiel, pitching me a story. “Between 50 and 100 lunch boxes” for a community street cleaning event, he says.
He then turns to Caleb Hilladakis, his events coordinator, and asks him to explain a weekly street-cleaning operation kicking off at the cafe, while he goes to the backroom to talk with more workers. Fifty to 100 people will be in attendance, Hilladakis explains, to leave from Manny’s and sweep the streets.
Returning from his sojourn to the storeroom, Yekutiel explains that running a business is, in many cases, a juggling act. “We’re all running around, all the time, trying to make sure that our cooks are being paid and make sure that we thank our guests. ‘Thank you for doing this today. Thank you for coming by. See you later.’” He makes no exception, greeting a mother who walks in the front door as well as her baby in a stroller. “It is the nature of being a small business owner. I’m not unique in that respect,” he says modestly.
One man congratulates Yekutiel on his “newfound fame” for a photo of the cafe that was recently posted on politician Katie Porter’s Twitter. “I’m grateful for spaces like @welcometomannys, which centers community above all else,” Porter, who is currently running for the Senate seat held by Dianne Feinstein, wrote.
Political connection is part of what makes Manny’s unique. Since its doors first opened in November, 2018, several political figures of note have come to the cafe, including Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Mayor London Breed and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Events often focus on political or social issues, including homelessness or trans rights.
“We are a space where the community comes together to take part in civic and political life,” he says. “We are a town hall, a village square, the place where anyone can meet and engage with civic leaders, elected officials, artists, activists, changemakers and each other.”
Last month marked the debut of a monthly series with Mission Local editor Joe Eskenazi in conversation with different civic leaders. The first such talk, “The Killing of Bob Lee & The Challenges of Covering Crime in San Francisco,” took place on April 25.
Yekutiel’s family has long been involved in small business ownership, and this tradition continues with his establishment.
“My grandfather was a merchant in Afghanistan, my father owned a small tablecloth company and [operated] his own restaurant when he emigrated to Canada in his 30s. My mother’s parents owned a grocery store in Brooklyn and she was constantly working in the shop. So it’s just kind of in my blood. … It’s just who I am.”
While the spirit of small business entrepreneurship runs in Yekutiel’s family, the civic and political side of the business comes from his chosen profession.
“I’m an activist by trade,” he continued. “I was a White House intern, I was on the [Barack] Obama and [Hillary] Clinton campaigns, and I worked on immigration reform and same-sex marriage.”
The creation of Manny’s stems directly from the divisive election of 2016.
“When Donald Trump won the election, I realized that there was a need for a physical place for people to go who [wanted] to get involved … to prevent people like Trump from being elected, and also just to have a more healthy democracy. I built a space for that purpose.”
Indeed, the food, beer, and homey aesthetic that is served up at Manny’s are not the main draw. The establishment is styled to be a place where civic and political discourse happens naturally, and the amenities offered are simply tools to achieve this goal.
“Food and beverage is a way to create a neutral social space that anyone could participate in,” said Yekutiel. “It’s a great easy way for someone to get more civically involved that might not be interested in partisan politics… If more people get involved, if more people are better informed, and if there are places for them to go to learn from each other, then our world will be a better place.”
“You’ve got to meet people where they’re at. Some people want to meet politicians,” Yekutiel continues. “Some people want to listen to poetry. Some people want to pick up trash. And so, what we try to do here at Manny’s is, we try to create opportunities for folks at every level of involvement that they’re ready for or comfortable with.”
That being said, Manny’s is a soapbox from which a certain kind of politician or activist may speak. “We are a partisan space. We support Democrats. We are liberal and left-leaning … we want to host everyone, all the way from socialists to moderate Democrats, anyone that considers themselves on the left.”
“Most of the organizations that rent the space are either nonprofits, advocacy groups or social justice organizations,” Yekutiel explained. “We are hosting a fundraiser next week for a man who’s running for Congress in the 27th District of California. Last night we had a town hall with the chief of police”
He ended the interview on a more personal note: discussing his rare skin cancer diagnosis late last year and a change towards his worldview.
“Thankfully, I’m fine and my prognosis is good. … [But I realized] I don’t want life to just pass me by … I don’t want to look back on my time on this earth and wish that I had paid more attention, or that I had wasted less time doing the things that don’t matter.”
The cancer, Kaposi’s Sarcoma, is normally found in those with weakened immune systems and can be fatal under those circumstances.
Luckily, Yekutiel is in the small minority of people without a compromised immune system who develop the cancer, meaning the sarcoma will not spread to the lymph nodes and organ systems, like it would in the body of an immunocompromised person.
Ultimately, he seems unfazed and unslowed by it all. The interview concludes, and Yekutiel immediately gets back to planning future events with his staff while simultaneously greeting newly arrived customers, all in the same breath. “Is this for the event tonight? Hold on, I’ll be right back. … Hello, welcome to Manny’s!”
Manny’s not an elitist, I’ve seen him talking to people on the sidewalk outside his cafe that he obviously just ran into.
I love what he does for the Mission community, he has become indispensable so I wish him the best of health and happiness.
So Mission Housing leases a store front in a city funded affordable housing building to a politically connected operative who uses his venue to showcase the powerful to build his own political power distinctly to the right of the baseline of the neighborhood. Nothing corrupt to see here. Why is Mission Local showcasing this?
He pays Mission Housing Development Corp. market rent for a space which would probably otherwise be empty and thus a burden on MHDC
The storefront was occupied by a sushi bar for almost 20 yr and had not been vacant. Public dollars are subsidizing political self promotion under a climate of rampant municipal corruption.
Has your team kicked Larry Bush off of Ethics yet?
This is a depressing take that demonstrates how cynical and zero-sum our politics are in this city. I haven’t spent that much time at Manny’s and am not into the centrist Dems who do events there, but there’s always a lot on their calendar that does interest me. And having seen Manny in action (pretty much every time I’ve been there) he is a true gem and we’re lucky to have him doing what he’s doing.
Mission Housing could have rented this to anybody, but my understanding is that they went with Manny because of his commitment to hiring locals and providing community space. I seriously doubt they litmus-tested his politics. Would you rather the space go back to the lame sushi place that was there before? This is a massive improvement.
So the appearance of blatant public sector corruption is not a big deal to you? Should we trust the future of the SFMTA to the product of this systemic corruption?
Seriously, no clue how he of all people got appointed to SFMTA… Don’t we need experience nowadays
Hey Marcos,
What are you doing for civic engagement?
Ad hominem responses to charges of public sector corruption makes your ass look fat.