although the desperate neon of rembrandt’s can be seen in the distance, all one-way streets seem to lead away from the cafe, forcing us to continue towards the chaos of the turnabout at the steps of the pma. as we pass an apartment block that has been transplanted from miami, we encounter the first […]

It is strange being at Java Monkey in the middle of the day. I usually frequent this coffee shop in the evenings, where the sounds of live music and poetry slams resonate through the cafe. Instead, Interpol or some other band is playing on the stereo system overhead. Java Monkey is by far my favorite […]

As far as I can recall, there is not much to say about this coffee shop. The east-side of athens is populated by cheap college apartments, and their respective denizens. This is not the most happenin’ part of the town by any means, but you can’t beat Jittery Joes coffee. This Jittery Joes is basically […]

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 […]

mani’s was all the things the cogs argue that los angeles is, too big, too many disparate functions, too many pretty empty faces. it is true, mani’s in santa monica was a big open room with little character, they did try to sell womens clothing in one corner and on the other side that […]

it was not the time to be roving the streets of some distant city. sometimes the distance from home helps you feel alienated enough to make assumptions about who you are, who you want to be, how you want to be seen. this is not the case in a motel room, one as […]

a creation scene painted on the ceiling. he (adam, joe?) reaches out languidly, recumbent on a flocculent drift of brushstrokes that blow toward the restrooms as if by force of the godhead and the divine finger, er, finger looped through a coffeemug handle. his finger is as limp as the miniscule penis […]

what a simple yet evocative name. if a comma were added it could serve as a list of the essential components of civilised existence. we made a long trek to coffee cat from the hawthorne district, strolling through neighbourhoods until the heat grew unbearable. then when it became clear that it would […]

cafe allegro is downstairs from the pensione, college inn, right across the street from gould hall, the university of washington college of architecture, which i had gone to visit in the spring of 1998 to investigate their graduate program. the inn is housed on the second through fourth floors of the tudor style building. […]

peripatetic in the city. sure it is romantic, sure it brings you to a space of scrutiny in which you can enjoy the stain of dirt left above the extinct neighbour’s roofline on a brick party wall for longer than you could at a stoplight, or at a busy bus stop, sure you can […]

Every so often you encounter a place, that, late in your life, aligns with a place that you have been enjoying in your mind’s restful hours for many years. At this stage you cannot divorce the physical place from the one you believe you had remembered. Were you indeed remembering it, somehow traced […]

Camera Café indeed lives up to its name, offering for purchase various kinds of hot drinks, as well as filters, lenses, and—yes—cameras. I don’t want to spill forth right at the start all the reasons Camera Café is amazing (café + camera = guaranteed good thing), waxing hyperbolic towards a soaring crescendo, to leave the […]

you enter a chamber containing a scepter, a tiara covered with baubles, and a suit of studded leather armour. something tells me it was left by someone of high standing, possibly, Storm.
there is not much that can parallel the entertainment i get from eavesdropping on coffeeshop rpgs (role playing games!). i would […]

Approaching Mugshots by bike from Center City, one is obliged to trek up ‘Fairmount Hill,’ as my colleague has recently dubbed that mound of residential rock which is capped by the Eastern State Penitentiary. I cycled up there one day late last spring–greeted by the prison’s looming turrets and crenellated crest, my mind began to […]

I understand the most recent edition of the _Taschen Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Design_ describes the interior of Velocity Cafe as a veritable taxonomy of postwar vinyl mobilier and oeuvres d’art plastique. The fact of its inclusion in this volume will most certainly ensure that cafe receives the patronage of thrift-store enthusiasts, nostalgic baby boomers, and […]

When freely associating, the name Stumptown reminded me of the devoted self-sacrificing tree in “The Giving Tree.” By name only, I expected this cafe to be a sort of dive, where old grizzly Portlanders would frequent in the mornings before continuing with the daily grind. I pictured ratty sofas, paint chipping off of second-hand tables […]

if you go the other way off of congress avenue from the bars, rock clubs, and bat caves you will stroll through what, in the heat of the day, is an unbearable wasteland, and as i did not chance it at night, i can only assume, a dark, unbearable wasteland. there is a noodle place […]

on my first and last trip to Last Drop, i asked the hipster behind the counter, ‘Why do you charge extra for soymilk?’
he replied, ‘We have to pay for it.’
i pointed out, ‘You have to pay for the cow’s milk and cream with which people supplement their coffee, as well; why don’t you charge extra […]

disturbed by the arrival of a thickly-lensed tweaker, who, before continuing to walk up 43rd street until disappearing over spruce hill, places a gallon of water and a copy of ‘mastering agriculture’, which apparently has been lifted from the library of the university of new mexico, on the table just beneath your perch, you look […]