It has all the impact of a politically motivated self-immolation.

Berkeley's Elmwood Cafe shut itself down without warning after a black Bay Area "comedian" called the place racist, citing a years-old incident nobody would likely be able to verify. According to KRON:

The abrupt closure comes after a famous comedian alleged that a racist incident happened to him at the cafe similar to the recent arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks. 

On Monday, famous East Bay comedian W. Kamau Bell recalled on CNN how he says he experienced racism there. 

“In 2015, I was kicked out of the Elmwood Cafe because they thought I was harassing my wife and my 13-week old baby,” Bell said. 

Following the interview, online reviews roasted the shop for the alleged racism against Bell.

No word on whether he was harassing his wife and baby, and why kicking someone out of a cafe for that would amount to 'racism.'

But lefties were on the job in the wake of it, scrawling negative reviews of the cafe on the Internet and whipping themselves up into a frenzy about how the place must have been really operated by the Klan.

Since I used to live in the area and am fairly sure I've been to this place in years past, the Elmwood Cafe is located in a cutesy, adorable, leafy, gentrified place in southern Berkeley that borders a similar gentrified area in north Oakland before hitting the rougher black working class and underclass areas of Oakland further south. The area has pretty much all independent and upscale shops with very few chain stores.  There are splendidly colorful, wonderful lefty (really rabidly lefty) establishments such as the Starry Plough pub and La Pena cultural center that on a non-political level are possible to like regardless of your politics. Very grassroots, very colorful and human, a rightwinger can only sigh that such talent is wasted on promoting leftwingery. There are actually a lot of restaurants in the area and they serve fabulous Bay Area California ultra-fresh, avant garde cuisine. There are spas, gift shops, boutiques...

And there was the charming Elmwood Cafe. Its sudden closure came after mighty Starbucks toppled after comparable pressure for a non-racist incident where a couple of patrons walked in, took up space at the tables, and upon being asked to order something, refused, prompting a call for the cops to come and haul their non-paying keisters out. Since they were black, the matter was deemed racist by the left, and Starbucks caved to the pressure, apparently firing its blameless manager, and bowing hard and promising to appease to the totems of racial grievance-mongering, by shutting the stores for a day of racial sensitivity training.

One set of rules for the black patrons, another set for the white patrons, seems to be how it's going to go now.

The Berkeley cafe was next, but it wasn't able to withstand such a storm, and since it might have been losing money anyway (imagine the taxes and regulations in that city), it just went Galt and shut itself down without warning.

Obviously, it shows that the racial grievance-mongers have found a great new soft target in their never-ending quest to find the Klan. First Starbucks, which caved on them, and now the little independent cafes. Just one coffee purveyor who could stand up for himself and call B.S. might be enough to put a stop to this, but with giant Starbucks caving, and in an atmosphere where the shop owners are lefties, the patrons are lefties (especially white upscale lefties who are utterly terrified of being called racists) and the narrative is lefty, such a scenario doesn't stand a chance.

Now the area doesn't have its cafe, which by the way has an interesting history - it was originally Ozzie's Soda Fountain, which had been a popular drug store and soda counter in the mid-20th century run by a distinguished black veteran of World War II. The cafe preserved the fountain in his honor. But well, now it's all shutting down in the name of racial virtue, and never mind the fountain.

As more shops close from just one claim of racism or another, lefties are going to have to realize that there won't be any more gourmet coffee for them. No cafes. And that will be bad for real estate values, too, as having a Starbucks in the neighborhood is a known sign of real estate values going up. Now that the coffee shops are closing, lefties must choose between having their racial virtue-signaling and having their cafes.