Karen Dawn

Caffe Luxxe pulls some of LA’s best espresso shots and, situated amid the casual-chic shops of Santa Monica’s moneyed Montana Ave, it also pulls in a sizable share of holistic mommies and bohemian millionaires.  There were in fact no empty tables for my brother Roy, myself and our weekday afternoon coffees, so we were delighted when Karen Dawn, author of Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals (site here) invited us to sit down at hers. When I asked Karen for permission to take and post her photo she said yes, with one condition: I needed to make it clear that the cappuccino in her hand was made with soy milk.  The animal rights activist could imagine no worse a humiliation than to be mistaken for someone sneaking off to the local coffee bar for a cup two-thirds filled with steamed cow’s milk.