Unhappy with the lack of cafes in the Square—Yangcras says Pamplona was the only one until Cafe Algiers opened in 1971—she decided to start her own.

Her intention, she says, was to capture something of her home in Pamplona, the Basque town where she grew up.

With the help of friends who lent her money for the purchase, Yangcras bought the 12 Bow St. spot when it came on the market.

“It was immediately successful,” Yangcras says with pride. “It was a very good place because it was for everybody. You can stay there from noon till night.”

Coffee And Philosophy

Throughout the years, Cafe Pamplona has attracted a loyal cast of characters who often spend hours in the black-and-white cave-like cafe.

Lee K. Riethmiller has come to the cafe nearly every night for the past thirty years at 11 p.m. to read, reflect, and write poetry.

He first visited the cafe when his business offered classes in conversational French, Italian or Spanish that took place at Pamplona.

Riethmiller wears his long black hair loose and likes to philosophize on the history of the cafe over a coffee and hot chocolate—taken simultaneously.

“The cafe is the future,” he says. “The cafe is the one marker of a truly urbane society."

“Coffee houses are the one place in our culture where you get an advanced perspective on your life,” he says. “If you sit in a pizza shop, you’re not going to feel the same way.”

Aside from the time Al Gore ’69 came to the cafe with his family, Riethmiller says his fondest memory of Pamplona is the day after the cafe stopped allowing smoking in 1998.

Customers and waiters can still smoke on the patio.

“The ones it was really fun to see were the ones who went off in a huff,” says Riethmiller, who is adamantly anti-smoking.

The More Things Change