This story was in the Post-Gazette this weekend. The brand-spanking new coffee house is located at 1501 Buena Vista St. on the North Side and, according to Pittsburgh Dish, the business hours are:
6 a.m.-5 p.m. M-F;
8 a.m.-8 p.m. on Saturdays;
and 8a.m.-4 p.m. on Sundays.

Looks like the North Side is blowing up! (In the best way.) We wish the Beleza Seven the best … and we hope this inspires others to start businesses in their own neighborhoods. Everyone will love you.

Saturday Diary: Beleza Community Coffeehouse — changing the world, one cup at a time

Saturday, April 01, 2006
By Diana Nelson Jones, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

My neighbors file into the Beleza Community Coffeehouse every morning, each of us still marveling that we have such a place. It’s small, just slightly funky enough and run by seven people who must be lauded by someone, so it’s going to be me.

And I swear I do and always will pay for my coffee there.

Beleza — which means “beautiful” in Portuguese — opened a little over a month ago, in a storefront building at the corner of Jacksonia and Buena Vista in the Mexican War Streets. People were standing outside at 7 a.m., an hour early.

“We didn’t advertise,” said Joanna Deming, one of the owners, grinning in amazement. “We wanted to ease into it, so we just e-mailed some friends. I expected to know everyone when we opened, but I didn’t know about 70 percent of them.

“They all knew each other, and everyone rotated around, talking. I thought, ‘This is so cool.’ Then it just started being full all day.”

What Beleza means to our neighborhood is estimable, but the Beleza Seven’s potential is a gift to the entire city of Pittsburgh, profoundly inestimable. The more I learn about them, their values and devotion, I think of what the anthropologist Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.”
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