About Sprouts

On Monday night several of us met at Local Sprouts Cafe on Congress St. to kick off the first of the weekly X-City Running group runs. This marked the first of many Mondays when runners dressed in day-glo green and "ahhh, my eyes!" orange will crowd in the doorway of this vibrant community space, stretching against the big brick building, and distracting the cafe's customers before heading out for a few moonlit miles through the West End.

I wanted to take a second to highlight how Local Sprouts came to be the lucky recipient of all this unsolicited runner love and how it fits in to the mission of X-City Running. 

Local Sprouts Cafe grew from the seeds of the Peoples Free Space, a Portland based community organization focused on creating collective spaces for sharing information and resources, building community, and fostering sustainable alternatives and creative resistance to social, economical, political, ecological oppression.

Over the years the Peoples Free Space went though the challenges and transitions of any upstart community organization, but the people involved in it's inception have stayed true to the principles that the organization was founded on. They have since put these principles into practice by opening the Meg Perry Center, a community meeting space dedicated to educational change and social action, followed by the opening of the highly successful Local Sprouts Cafe located directly across the street.

Local Spouts Cafe has some of the best food in town and is also home to the Bomb Diggity Bakery which is always putting out a delicious selection of desserts.  But, good grub aside, it is the values of this co-operatlily owned and operated cafe that I wanted to shine a lightmon:

"Local Sprouts focuses on using local and organic ingredients to build connections to our community, to grow sustainability, to support Maine farmers, to protect our environment, and to build our local economy. We are a worker-owned cooperative that believes in creating a democratic and equitable business to serve our workers and our community"-from the Local Sprouts website

The goal of X-City Running is to strengthen the local running community while strengthening the community that we run in.  With that in mind, I couldn't think of a better place to bombard with hungry runners who'll drink up all of their coffee and clean out the Bomb Diggity bakery counter on any given Monday night. 

So that's what 'Spouts is all about.  If you want to learn more visit their site and check out the menu, upcoming events at the 'cafe, and information on how to become a member of the co-op.

And if you want come bursting in the door.all sweaty and loud and talking about running while eyeing up the last cookie in the case then join us on Monday nights at 6p for the X-City weekly run!