i have this romantic notion of what a coffee shop is. a place of contemplation, reflection, community; an oasis of sorts; a melting pot; a place for serendipitous meetings, connections; a place for epiphanies, insights. a shelter from the storm. a place for something new, something different to take root and bloom.
the beautiful music, the beautiful baristas, the curated community, the hospitality; the warm hospitality. a petri dish, a warm gel, for a counterculture to take root, to take bloom. an idealistic vision, perhaps; a romantic one, but one nonetheless.
it is with such a view, such a perspective, that i find recent visits to local coffee shops so jarring.
yesterday, i was in la colombe on lafayette street listening to one woman loudly sell or talk about whatever her thing was. words like platform/social/metrics/growth punctured the air. punctured it.
then today, i got a bagel at konditori, a compact space near where i live. in there was a guy who was having a conference call with his board of directors. are you fucking kidding me? do you think anyone waking up and enjoying the calm respite before the start of the day wants to hear that?
then over to el rey; a slightly larger but still intimate space. a woman waiting, another enters. the one that enters starts interviewing the other. questions like, "so of all your classes in college, which were your favorites?" again, are you fucking kidding me? do you honestly think that ppl coming here in the morning want to hear your stupid fucking interview questions? want to witness you put someone through this asinine, outdated, arcane, asymmetric ritual?
lest i stop here, i want to add laptops to the mix. another local shop, bluebird, has wide open windows that look out to green trees beautifully lit by the rising sun. on the window ledge are often perched laptops.
laptops laptops laptops. the bane of my coffee house existence. ppl sidle up next to you and pop them open. some of them pound on the keyboard. pound pound pound. for me, they just kill the aesthetic. starting with the visual. and seeping through the rest of our senses to the soul.
many of my difficulties in life arise from having unrealistic expectations of the world. the people in it. and perhaps myself, too. maybe i am a crabby old man. perhaps i have unreasonable expectations of the coffee shop, the coffee house.
but to me, they are sacred spaces. they are where people come together, to appreciate each other, to commune, in the best sense of the word. to savor. to appreciate. to do all those things that one cannot do in our oft oppressive world.
would one conduct a job interview in a temple? a conference call in an art gallery? would one pull out a laptop and start hacking away in the theatre? in a concert hall?
here's to sacred spaces, to free spaces.
here's to the coffee shop.
here's to the coffee house.
long may it live.
