i havent been to the 18th street coffeehouse in about 4.5 years, but it was the kind of place i sense would not change so much over time. it seemed frozen in its little sundrenched plot and the strains of patsy cline ambling across the tile floors and echoing against the cast iron ceiling must still sing out into the doldrums of santa monica. in a truly dismal and forgettable spot in the city, this coffeehouse became my living room for a few months at the end of summer in 2000. a large mexican family had moved in downstairs from me bringing with them a large stereo and a passion for ranchero and polka beats. i learned to stuff clothes into the crack under the bedroom door and sit without my feet touching the floor to avoid picking up the vibrations. it was a nightmare that accompanied a particularly alienating stint in the beige city. i sought refuge every morning at 7am, driving out of the way on santa monica backroads, to wander into 18th street where i worked on various things to keep occupied. in this transporting atmosphere i could almost think of those situations from which i was hiding as impersonal fodder. the small patio style mosaic tables were a bit hard to write on but when the bay windows onto the street were open and david duchovny and tracy ullman were breaking off coffees and getting harassed and crazy, im crazy for feeling so lonely tinny across the room, and the wretched apartment was gone and i was working, and i couldnt change a thing about it ever again, not the kind of pencil i write with, not my productivity in coffeeshops, and not my memories of that little place. after those few months and after i moved out to culver city i rarely went there again. this little place deserved more than to be used for self-indulgence. there is a way that you abandon a place not because you burn out on it but because it doesnt make sense or seems offensive to that dreamy place somehow to include it in your new phase of life, as if you wanted to selfishly rely upon it to conjure up some feelings that had no place in your new situation.
poured in: California, Santa Monica
February 3rd, 2006 at 12:46 am
[…] there have been 2 shops in my short life thus far that, for any appreciable length of time, usurped my home as consistent theatre of operations or sitting parlour. one was the 18th street coffeehouse in santa monica and the other was jittery joe’s at five points in athens. for about 1.5 years i spent almost every sunday evening here or the surrounding environs, watching the clear spring sunday dusks cool over the intersection, dissected by wires and swollen with the rush of lights in the apartments and houses up milledge as the sun disappeared completely, wandering in late summer sunsets, fighting the sane urge to forego a soy latte in the putrefying heat yet stepping into the airconditioning, as the dusk sweat clings my ‘mad butcher’ tshirt to my back, and ordering one up anyway from my boy todd and drinking it in the window until the sun went down, sitting in the breeze on the stoop in front of the laundromat on lumpkin after dropping lwat81 > off at 5&10 for work with my notebook on my lap until the autumn chill set in and i took my coffee into the laundromat until full night before going back to jittery joe’s, where, when the night was dark, the glass would turn such a reflective black on the insides that the warm little banker’s lamps on the tables and the generally low glow would create such a dissociative vessel that upon leaving, after a few hours, my stomach would sink at the emptiness that claims the night air in north georgia, as if the powers of the coffee were only effective within the warmth of the shop, and, immediately without the effects of the caffeine, i drove back to lwat81’s little duplex disoriented to cook a warm meal to ring in the week. […]