On July 24, 2022, the day Portfolio Coffeehouse closed after 32 years as a Long Beach institution at the corner of 4th Street and Junipero Avenue, owner Kerstin Kansteiner knew that six months later she’d be back in business little more than a block away.
But everybody saying that Portfolio was moving had it wrong. Portfolio was passing away, and Kansteiner was in mourning. “I have to look at this as a new beginning,” she said that day through tears, toting a bouquet of flowers a loyal patron had gifted. “Otherwise I won’t make it through.”
That new beginning is Alder & Sage, which opened softly this month serving coffee beverages and a small array of eats. Expanded hours, dinner service, and beer & wine will come next month. For now, she’s just gratified that people are showing up.
Did she really have any doubt? “Oh shit yeah,” she says, “ohmigod yes! [In the run-up to opening] you’re exhausted, and there’s still a million things to do. And then you open and there are people here, but you’re like, ‘Well, maybe they’ll stop coming tomorrow.’ And then there are people here the next day and I’m like, ‘Okay, that’s good; and some of the people who were here yesterday and here again today — that’s even better.’ The number of people who’ve come in is a validation, […] but I’m gonna have that doubt for a long time. […] From having had several businesses now, I know the world has changed. It’s [become] more ‘here today, gone tomorrow.’ In this world of 144-character [tweets] kids so often just move on to the next cool thing.”
Occupying what was formerly Carousel Preschool (itself a bit of an institution), Alder & Sage is 2,200 square feet of wood (alder, of course), windows, and a feng shui that flows from front to back. Step outside and you find another 2,200 feet with fire pits, meticulously landscaped drought-tolerant flora, and if your timing is right a squirrel scurrying along the back fence.
All in all, there’s enough seating so that patrons nursing cups of coffee for three hours won’t feel guilty taking up tables needed to serve the diners that will financially justify keeping Alder & Sage open as late 10 p.m. (five hours later than Portfolio — which once upon a time stayed open ‘til midnight and beyond — during its last several years even pre-pandemic).
But none of this would have come to pass had Kansteiner had her way. The trouble started in 2017 when she dropped off her five-year lease extension, just as she had done five years earlier (and five years before that). But this time landlord Michael Salemi claimed she didn’t file it in the manner required and put her on a month-to-month basis, which allowed him to raise the rent beyond the yearly 3% allowed by the extension. Kansteiner claims a sort of harassment ensued (“torture by a thousand needles”), including bogus reports to the City of Long Beach that Portfolio was out of compliance with various codes (Salemi confirms filing the reports, alleging violations related to an improper kitchen remodel). A protracted legal battle ensued, during which Kansteiner says she spent roughly $140,000 in legal fees and suffered rent increases totaling 28% by 2021.
She recalls reaching a breaking point one day sitting at her kitchen table with husband Jan van Dijs. “‘I can’t do this anymore,’” she told him. “‘[…] Even though my attorney says I’m going to win, emotionally I cannot do this anymore.’ Jan said, ‘That’s what [Salemi] wants you to do. But this is wrong, and if we have to we’ll put every dollar of our savings on the line. We’re going to see this through.’ Had he not set me straight, I think I would have given up.”
(Salemi says that by 2017 “it just wasn’t working out. […] But Kerstin is a great person. She’ll do really well with [Alder & Sage]. It was just time to move on.”)
In June 2021, Salemi and Kansteiner reached a settlement which Kansteiner regarded as a clear victory, including an allowance for Portfolio to operate rent-free for what would have been the remaining 13 months of the 2017 lease extension.
But needless to say, this would be Portfolio’s last hurrah.
“By the end, I was just so tired,” she recounts. “I couldn’t even celebrate [the victory]; I just wanted to throw up. […] In some sense there was no winning. I thought I was going to have to let [all my employees] go. To live with that for another year — knowing that I was going to have to close, going to work every day looking at these people who are making plans for the future…. I honestly thought, ‘This is it. I know 4th Street, and there’s no place I can move my business; and there’s no other place I want to be.’”
Enter Scott Ross, a longtime Portfolio regular (hot chocolate was his go-to) and area property owner with whom Kansteiner (in her capacity as president of the 4th Street Business Association) had dealt in regards to his parking lot at 4th & Cherry. “Pretty late in the game I was like, ‘Maybe I should call him.’”
When she did, Ross informed her that the Carousel Preschool space was available. “He said, ‘I couldn’t envision anything better than having you as my tenant.’”
She signed the lease in April 2022 and, with van Dijs as her ace-in-the-hole (his JR van Dijs Construction Management is responsible for the Edison Lofts and rehabilitation of the Lafayette and the Art Theatre, among several other downtown Long Beach projects), they immediately went to work transforming 366 Cherry into more than she hoped for. “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I could [get] this,” she says, spreading her arms in appreciation of all that surrounds her.
But however much she hoped to transfer aspects of Portfolio’s spirit into this healthy new body, she never considered keeping the old name. “A lot of people were mad that I’m not calling this ‘Portfolio,’” she says. “But I can’t call it that because clearly this is not Portfolio and never will be. It had to be a different name.”
She did, however, rehire any and all employees who wanted to embark on this new venture, and she’s overwhelmed with how all of them, along with the customers — regardless of how long they’ve been part of Kansteiner’s journey — are starting a new tradition in the best sense of the old.
“I have employees here who were not born when Portfolio opened, were not there when we were smoking cigarettes behind the counter late at night. I don’t think they’re even familiar with that culture,” she says. “It’s a new generation, but they still appreciate the thing that I’ll very loosely call ‘community’ that Portfolio created. It’s still here. It’s different from what it was, but the feeling of having a safe place, belonging, being able to go somewhere and just be, maybe strike up a conversation with somebody or just sit in a corner, it’s still here — and it made me very happy to see that these past three days. There are people who came in and stood in line and maybe had never talked to each other but recognized each other from Portfolio and said, ‘Oh my god, I remember you!’ We’re together; that’s still here. Can Portfolio be revived? Absolutely not. But it can be different and still create community. […] Whatever happened at Portfolio, that should not be the measure of success here. I can only move forward and say, ‘Here is this new thing.’”
Check out that new thing, Alder & Sage, at 366 Cherry Ave. Current hours are 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but for up-to-date hours and menu listings, visit aldersage.com.