Walk into Durham’s Perfect Lovers and you might be privy to an impromptu dance performance featuring local professionals. You might stumble across a tattooing pop-up with a dozen clients mid-tattoo. You’ll definitely be able to sip espresso from local coffee brewers Black and White and Joe Van Gogh or Georgia-based Caption Coffee while taking in art hanging on handmade mobile gallery walls.
When thinking over the vision for Perfect Lovers, which opened in February 2022, owner Carrie Elzey wanted it to feel more like a coffee pop-up within a gallery than a coffee shop that also happened to have some art on the walls. And it worked. Most of the space, located off North Roxboro Street beside Redstart Foods, is dedicated to a rotating show or performance instead of the usual tables and semi-comfortable chairs you’ll find at most coffee shops, even during “espresso hours” (which run nine to two Tuesday to Saturday).
The shop is the culmination of two of Elzey’s great loves. They trained at Aurora Coffee, Atlanta’s first specialty coffee shop, and their instincts have been honed over more than a decade spent in the industry. After then completing their MFA in “new genres” (when I ask what that means, they answer, “Whatever you want it to mean, that’s fine! It’s not medium bound.”) at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010, they knew they wanted to get back into the specialty coffee industry.
This isn’t Elzey’s first coffee shop. They opened a coffee space called Two Clocks in Decatur, Georgia, in 2018 with a roasting partner. When the lease was up in 2020, Elzey decided to move to Durham. The names of both shops pay homage to the same sculpture by the Cuban-born American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled (Perfect Lovers),” which is made up of two analog wall clocks ticking (initially at least) in time. Gonzalez-Torres created many sculptures out of ordinary objects whose gravity comes partly from their context.
While Elzey didn’t start drinking coffee until they were in their thirties—and even now say they only need one cup a day—they appreciate the work it takes to grow and pull a good espresso shot and have high standards for their coffee. They know the ideal measurements for a shot of ground coffee and a pulled shot, but they’re seasoned enough to rely mostly on their instincts. Despite all this, though, Elzey isn’t a coffee snob: their goal for the shop is mostly about making people happy.
Roxboro, a notoriously busy road, doesn’t get much foot traffic. At times, Elzey has struggled to keep the shop open.
“There have been many times where I’ve thought maybe I should just close,” they say. “I think anybody that potentially had a family, other kinds of obligations, or other standards for income probably would have given up.”
But the community has come through, too. “There are a lot of generous people offering up their time, their connections,” Elzey continues. “People donate to my GoFundMe, they’ve donated plants and a cool robot vacuum cleaner. People were just willing to help. At times I haven’t even asked.”
The first two years of running the shop have come with their ups and downs, but Elzey’s goal for the next few years is simple: “More of the same, with less struggle.” And business does seem to be picking up. They’re seeing more people come in for coffee and hosting more private parties in the space. “I’m hopeful,” they say. “I think it’s turning a corner.”
Over the past two years, there have been yoga classes, melancholy pilates, spoken word performances, and the occasional acoustic set at Perfect Lovers. The arts scene that cycles in and out of the space is driven highly by community and word of mouth. Poet and musician Dylan Angell remembers meeting Elzey at a show and how quickly they offered their space up for events.
Angell, who has organized a few shows at Perfect Lovers, loves the DIY nature of the space. At a January rendition of Evenings, a quarterly interdisciplinary arts event he organizes with fellow artists Victoria Bouloubasis and Loan Tran, he estimates that nearly 100 people ended up gathering in the space. The trio has utilized other places around Durham before, but Angell says those spaces haven’t offered the same level of connection.
“Whatever we’re trying to create, it’s important to be able to make eye contact with every single person in the room and have the level of intimacy that you have at Perfect Lovers,” Angell says.
At a recent show, someone who doesn’t live in Durham told Angell they feel the city is the center of the North Carolina art scene, “because you can never really define what it is, so it feels like it’s kind of always recreating itself.”
“I think that Perfect Lovers is recreating itself every day. So I feel like the [art] that lands there is stuff that’s ambitious and interesting,” Angell says. “It’s experimental enough that it doesn’t quite have a place yet.”
Dancer Londs Reuter is one of a pair of local dancers who regularly perform/practice in the space during the day. She’s also had her work displayed on a video loop in Perfect Lovers and hosted performances in the evening, and she occasionally teaches a class called melancholy pilates too, which she describes as “horizontal, laying-down movements that we all do together to sad songs for about an hour.”
Reuter’s dance partner, Anna Maynard, initially approached Elzey about dancing in the space during coffee shop hours.
“It’s been really special to animate the space with dancing, especially when there isn’t an event or an exhibit up in the space,” Reuter says. “It’s just a giant blank slate for like 60 percent of the room. So we’ve had people on the Zoom calls in the front, while we’re like noodling in the background with some bird-sound soundscape playing. It’s been really nice to find ways for it to coexist and not be disruptive, not demand attention, but just sort of share the tension in the room if you don’t want to look at your computer. We’re just bodies moving.”
And Reuter loves the way Elzey is just up for anything. When Reuter proposed melancholy pilates, Elzey jumped immediately to scheduling. “It wasn’t ‘if,’” Reuter says. “It was ‘how.’ And that made it feel so like a partnership.”
As Durham continues to build the same luxury five-over-one apartment buildings, Reuter would love to see more spaces like Perfect Lovers. Durham has previously seen scrappy, DIY-leaning arts communities in spaces like the Mothership, Man Bites Dog, and the Carrack, all of which have closed in the last five years.
“There’s a long history in Durham of spaces like this, and we’re definitely in a moment of having fewer of them,” Reuter says, noting the cost to maintain the space. “It will be cool with all these condo buildings if some had some community space. I have visions for how this could coexist and be supported by our city, but in the meantime, Perfect Lovers is filling a gap and upholding a long legacy of spaces like this.”
I have visions for how this could coexist and be supported by our city, but in the meantime, Perfect Lovers is filling a gap and upholding a long legacy of spaces like this.”
If you’re interested in attending an upcoming event, the best way to stay on top of the schedule is through the Perfect Lovers Instagram account. Alli Blois will be playing on March 22, and a campaign to write letters asking Governor Cooper to commute the sentences of prisoners condemned to death will take place on March 25.
Mark Adams, secretary of local arts collective Synchronicity Arts, has been to more than half a dozen events and performances at Perfect Lovers.
“I like that it’s a flexible space where you can meet different types of people,” Adams says. “There’s a malleability to it. I’ve never seen it set up the same way twice.”
I’d describe Elzey and their space as unpretentious but uncompromising. It’s a hard line to walk. The espresso is very, very good, but ordering at Perfect Lovers doesn’t feel like your classic intimidating craft coffee shop with a too-cool-to-chat barista. In fact, Elzey is pretty much the only one who pulls shots during the week, unless a friend comes in to cover an urgent need. The art leans contemporary, but it also feels grounded and well-contextualized.
The shop has given Elzey, who’s originally from Maryland, an intense appreciation for Durham.
“There’s just something about Durham,” they say. “I think people just are looking out for each other.”
They’re turning to the community again for partnerships to keep things running smoothly. There’s a nearly funded GoFundMe, and Elzey has recently started partnering with Piedmont Wholesale Flowers, which sells flowers out of the space three days a week (wholesale from 9 to 12 on Tuesday and Thursday and to the public 8 to 10 on Friday), to alleviate some of the rent pressure.
For now, they’re just excited to see who else will walk through their door.
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