2 Friends Transform Pilsen Auto Shop Into Cafe And Art Gallery

PILSEN — For 30 years, Ruben Mandujano’s auto shop was a frequent stop for Pilsen residents to get their cars fixed.  Now, the space is drawing neighbors for a different reason. Café Jon and Galleria, a 6,000 square-foot coffee shop, art gallery and event space at 2002 W. 18th Street, opened last month in the former Ruben’s Auto Service, a collaboration between Mandujano, a longtime neighborhood artist, and Uduimoh Umolu and Bellal Taher, the founders of Jon Basíl Tequila. The cafe and gallery joins a growing number of coffee shops along Pilsen’s 18th Street, a strip well known for sustaining a vibrant cafe culture. Some of the shops have stood for decades, including Cafe Jumping Bean, which opened in 1994. Recent additions within the last few years have become neighborhood staples, like Café Carranza, Pink Flores and Cup of Joe Pilsen. When Umolu met Mandujano in 2018, Umolu’s father had recently passed away. Umolu said he and his father shared a deep passion for old, v