Flambeau’s goes where others dare not go

On a dark stretch of Market Street known more for driving past instead of stopping by, I stopped.

It was a fall Friday evening and I had just left the Youngstown Boys and Girls Club on Oak Hill Avenue.

The stop was brief. But it was long enough to take note of live music being played in a dimly lit, gravel, inner-city parking lot and a handful of people milling about.

I would have stayed longer, but it was too odd, too out of the norm for that area, and a section of the South Side that prevailing wisdom says is, at night, too not a suburban setting.

Prevailing wisdom. It steers us in a lot of ways.

It steered Sandra Murphy and Josh Alphonse to start a business in a part of the city long ago dismissed as a place to start a business.

That live reggae music that fall night was from their Flambeau’s Live club on Market Street.

Flambeau’s aims to be a Valley hub of Caribbean culture – from music to food to lifestyle. Depending on which way you are headed on Market Street, Flambeau’s is at the northern part of the Uptown as you head into downtown Youngstown, or it’s at the southern fringe of town as you steam your way into Boardman.

It’s a brave venture that defies prevailing wisdom, sure; unconventional by every measure.

But the accents of Josh and Sandra immediately open you to their other world. Then you trace with them their lives – and for them, Flambeau’s might be the most conventional life move they’ve made.

Both in their 50s, they are from the Caribbean – she from Trinidad and he from Haiti. And before the story goes further, note that they are friends and business partners – brought together in this Youngstown leap of faith.

Josh still treks back to New York City every other week or so, where his son is a high schooler and his wife teaches at the same school. Josh’s daughter is a school psychologist in Washington, D.C. Josh left Haiti in 1972 in the seventh grade, along with his four siblings. They joined their mother, who arrived a few years earlier to work in New York clothing design. Josh was a soccer phenom and earned a scholarship to Davis & Elkins College in West Virginia. He had a 25-year career managing Radio Shack stores and was part of the recent shutdown – closing the store he called home in a New York suburb.

Sandra’s U.S. arrival is more startling.

Living in Trinidad with four kids and separated from her husband, she had a cousin living north of New York City in Chappaqua (yes, the “Clintons’ place.”) Her cousin was a nanny there. She had to travel for a bit, and so to protect her job, she asked Sandra to come fill in for her.

“When I landed in New York, I knew I was coming here,” she said. Her cousin’s Chappaqua family had neighbors who just had a child and who would be needing a nanny, and that was it. Sandra returned to Trinidad to gather her kids – ages 9, 12, 13, 16 – and there was no turning back. That was 20 years ago. Her kids are now a surgical assistant in Connecticut, a retail manager and a computer programmer in Arizona, and a Toledo mom.

It was the Toledo daughter who led Sandra to Youngstown five years ago. She wanted to help that daughter, but she still had needs and work in New York. A Boardman home was where she decided to drop a stake. Friends and fate connected her to Josh – who was willing to launch Flambeau’s in his post-Radio Shack life.

The Flambeau’s idea started in a small Austintown place, then to a current plaza at Hillman Way and Midlothian Boulevard, with the ultimate vision of the Market Street club they opened this fall. The Hillman Way takeout will close soon, and on March 8 the Market Street location will be a lunch-to-midnight full-service restaurant-club six days per week.

They are an interesting partnership.

Sandra speaks first, most, loudest and proudest – almost like a boxer. (Oddly, one of her New York friends still is Mrs. Burt Sugar – he the late legendary boxing writer.)

Josh is quiet at first, patiently waiting to jump in as Sandra pauses to breathe. But he is just as confident and studying everything. Numbers are his specialty. He still knows that he arrived in America on Aug. 26, 1972.

They have done a nice job launching Flambeau’s Live. Call them brave and optimistic. But not naive. They have too many miles and life experiences under them for that.

“A salesman came to sell us some things,” said Sandra. “When he called back a few days later and we said no, he said, ‘Well – no one will come out to your place anyway.’”

They beg to differ – or at least beg to give it a fighting chance.

“People want to call Youngstown ‘ghetto,’” says Sandra incredulously. “And these are Youngstown people who say this. I’m from New York City and I’m from the Caribbean. You do not know ghetto here compared to there.”

Josh laughs at the people – like me – who slowly drove by last fall as live music played in their side lot. The six or so live events were a soft launch for them just to get eyeballs on the previously closed property that was the Gutter King store. It officially opened in late October.

“It was fun to see grow. People brought lawn chairs. People parked in the lot across the street. I went up and visited their cars to get them more comfortable,” said Josh.

It’s a process that still continues. Sandra said building bridges has pointed them in directions they never would have known here. They’ve been down some wrong paths, too. Again – it’s a process.

A friend, and I guess fate, connected me to them a few weeks back. I took another friend there for lunch this week.

The food – oxtail was a first, as was curried chicken – is great. The story is greater.

Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes emails about stories and our newspaper. Email him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on vindy.com. Tweet him, too, at @tfranko.