Cafe serves up an alternative to pop culture.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

EDITOR'S NOTE: Welcome to Ten Cups. This is the third of 10 Tuesday columns about stops at 10 Lane County cafes.

Captain's Log, Oct. 30, 2006. My plan of ordering 10 cups of hot chocolate at various cafes to observe and interact with people has been thwarted.

That's because the Laughing Planet Cafe, in the southern reaches of Eugene's Whiteaker neighborhood, does not serve hot chocolate.

Fresh-squeezed carrot-apple-beet juice, yes. Organic peanut butter, yes. "Spanky's bowl," a concoction of organic mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, organic sweet corn and Tillamook hormone-free cheese, yes. But no hot chocolate.

Ah, but out of despair comes enlightenment: the realization that the cafe, though rooted in a sort of biscuits-and-gravy American tradition, is changing. And so it is that the Laughing Planet is not your father's cafe, unless your father is, say, a lactose-intolerant hipster who's grooving to a song by the Flaming Lips, an Oklahoma psychedelic alternative rock band, while watching his children gallop their plastic dinosaurs through bowls of organic rice 'n' beans.

`This is freak culture, and I mean `freak' in the best sense of the word,' says "Uncle" Victor Stathakis, a Planet regular who's been reading a story by anarchist John Zerzan in Green Anarchy magazine. `This is not suits and ties and SUVs and `Rah, rah, rah, Go Ducks, Kill! Kill! Kill!' It's more alternative. More counterculture. It's part of the 'hood.'

Like other places we've featured - the Vida Cafe and the Coburg Cafe - it's a gathering place. A place that's as much about conversation as it is about food. But the Planet is light years from such places in terms of who comes here, what they eat and what they talk about.

Politics. Music. Current events. These are the hot topics, the regulars say.

"I like to think of us as a thinking man's greasy spoon," says co-owner Richard Satnick, who helped launch the cafe in 2004 with partner Steve Mertz. "It's a multiple-use space where people eat, visit, catch up with neighbors and friends."

What makes this place different, of course, is the menu (`Sasquatch Salad,' anyone?); the decor (lots of limited-edition posters by R. Crumb, the cartoonist who did Janis Joplin's album cover); and the catering to children.

There's a kids' menu. The counter beyond the "bar stools" is lined with plastic dinosaurs, space aliens, werewolves and, of course, the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. And, yes, that would be a pink lei around the Dracula statue's neck.

Like the Hemingway short story, this cafe at 760 Blair Blvd. is a clean, well-lighted place, though Papa probably never saw such a striking blend of bright wall colors - nor an "Australian Bigfoot Digs Neil Diamond" poster.

On this Monday lunch hour, a woman breast-feeds her baby at a back table. A man in work overalls eats while reading "The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organism, and the Order of Life." A couple of house-painter types chow down on burritos - or what Satnick likes to call PNDs (`personal nutritional devices'). And a few 20-somethings scan the Web on their laptops, thanks to the cafe's Wi-Fi setup.

Those who work here lean toward the young, energetic and whimsical side - yes, that would be a plastic propeller atop Todd Richard's hat. "We like characters," Satnick says. "We like the help to mess with the customers a little, coach 'em if they're unfamiliar with this kind of food."

Being so kid-friendly, the cafe can become, as one Planet observer says, a bit like "an alternative Papa's Pizza." But there's a sort of "it-takes-a-Planet-to-raise-a-child" feel to the place, says Lisa Oxman, a massage therapist who comes regularly.

"It's fun. Little people are running around. But people keep an eye on them."

Above all, she says, there's "a sense of peace" at the Planet. "People are seeking a higher consciousness, even if that means just sitting down to dinner as a family."