“Wouldn’t it be nice if someone knew what they wanted when they came in?”

Well, let me you this, jackass, this horrible world is overflowing with filthy Burger Kings where I am certain you may find plenty of greasy mouthbreathers to stagger to your work station and demand a ‘#2′ or the ‘Valu-Kit’ or whatever they name the rubbish they box for sale in national chain restaurants. You could skate over to MLK Blvd and fill out an application immediately, forgoing the reading the remainder of this surly rant. As it happens, you choose to work behind the counter in a boutique coffee house where the menu is not reduced to efficient numerical packages, and the overwhelming majority of the populace does not have a comprehensive and intimate knowledge of every cake and tart in your case.

One wonders, as I do, what it was that you were doing that was so important that made my approach to the counter such a distraction. I would expect that you are in this cafe for the term of your shift, which is the same number of hours regardless of what any moment’s task entails, whether it is cutting eight dollar slices of peanut butter cake, hosing human fæces from the bathroom sink, or standing sedately at the register when a customer tries to order.

Given a choice, what else would you do with your time at the cafe? Were there many lives depending on you checking the messages your iPhone? Were you on the verge of breaking through a gene sequence that would prevent cancer or provide telepathy for future generations of humans? Was Obama texting you for advice on how to get 30,000 troops to haul ass to Afghanistan before accepting a Nobel Peace prize?

Not Gallery Espresso.

In the event, no one asked you to stop what you are doing and ‘wait for me’. I walked into the building and stopped five feet, minimum, from the counter to have a look. This tableauxist is the one least known for meticulous descriptions of a cafe’s physical complexion and superficies, but I do take notice. For these are those ‘things I can’t live without’ that are listed in my online profile, but they are not something I can sit down and catalog in any cohesive form. Why do you think I only write internally monologued biographies?

If my apparent dispassionate observations come across as confusion or befuddlement, maybe I am too easily distracted; perhaps if you tore down the display stands hocking earrings made from seashells and hot glue and demounted the matted laser prints of potted plants and shutters, and you instead put up a massive banner that states ‘No Vegan Items’, then I could rush the counter with out the need to spend a minute scanning every piece of text on site before my approach for a coffee.

What Ho! Can you imagine my surprise when upon my ordering ‘a coffee‘, you had to ask ‘what kind?‘?

“Wouldn’t it be nice if a barista could just take a simple order?”

There is only one thing ‘coffee’ can mean. I didn’t say I needed ‘coffee + soymilk’ or ‘coffee + sugar’ or ‘coffee + hazelnuts’. You don’t pour a sack of flour into a bowl and say ‘here’s your cake’; if you add anything to coffee then it is no longer ‘coffee’. If I say ‘coffee’, all I want in the cup is coffee. There is no ‘kind’, if I wanted a ‘kind of coffee’, I would have asked for coffee with a kind of something.

The only way your question would have been valid would be if you had a dozen varietals and/or roasts to choose from, which you did not, or if you offered a variety of brewing methods, such a vacuum pots, french press, the method method, or cowboy coffee. Even then, I would expect your question to be, ‘How would you like that coffee brewed, superuser?‘, since the ‘kind’ of coffee remains the same, but you only serve the standard auto drip.

This is cafe tableaux; when it comes to writing about about the nature of a cafe’s coffee, or the coffee + smilk, if you please, only I can decide what is apropos. To the reader who wonders, ‘hey brah, why don’t you devote more time to the coffee/baristas/lighting/whatever other hook I feel is so vital?‘, the answer is ‘because this is cafe tableaux‘.

However, in contradiction to my usual affected aloofness with regards to the rabble’s criticisms, to nip that shit, I’ll tell you now: I have found nothing remarkable about the coffee at Gallery Espresso, except that it was convenient and never hot enough. I’ve never touched the food there, but I once rendezvoused here with a couple of skinnies from pie v cake; they could not stop raving about the non-vegan pecan pie, and I recall they went back for second pieces. Also, you need a key to use the head. That should cover everything.

Anyway, this ‘tableau’ is obviously little more than a rambling diatribe. Gallery Espresso seems nice enough; it is just that one barista is a bit of a cunt. It strikes me that Gallery is a place is more suited for tourists to get sandwiches after visiting the Forrest Gump bench or the Girl Scouts house than it is a place for locals to meet for their Sunday morning Reading Circle (this week: The Red and The Black), so a barista could call you a ’shit stain’ to your face for all the difference it would make, as you won’t be around town for a second visit anyway.

This could probably be taken up in klatch – and would have been if anyone used it – but I wonder if cafe tableaux might develop a classification system for the various but limited cafe typologies. It is not for a lack of cafes or trying that this superuser rarely posts new tableaux; you see, unlike JHT, I am unable to eat dung and shit silver – trust me, I have seen the man in person and it coats him like dew every morn. The truth is, believe it or not, I am debilitated by depression and loneliness 9 days out of 10, and the chances that anything noteworthy transpires at the moment I visit a cafe are slim to none; it is this fading of one cafe experience into the next as ‘my life drips like coffee down the drain‘ that unmans me as I stare at an empty jotter night after night.

Allow me to assure the reader, I have tried to enliven events, for your sakes – manipulating craigslist missed connections all week before going in to judge the employees’ and customers’ behaviour, or pouring coffee on a cute girl’s notebook whilst she is in the restroom then telling her that I saw the guy who did it running out the door. However, though we are not objective here, it seems like an impropriety to affect the story with such tactics; this is not ‘gonzo tableaux’.

So! All of these cafes look the same to me. After describing one of each type in the first round of tableaux, I have no zest for listing their details again and again. If this site were to take any lesson from Burger King, we could just stamp out ‘visited a #2′ and maybe keep the attention of the baristas at Gallery:

1. Strip Mall Cafe – Clad with cheap wood veneer, tile floor, and neon. Owned by a wife-husband team or a sole proprietor with another, reliable source of income; they have heard that this Starbucks thing has made billions of dollars, so they want the same from cafe. Bottles of syrup prominently displayed. Everything looks cheap and cash-and-carry, because they put bare minimum of profit back into store, for the rest goes to buy a new flat screen or smart-phone. Lasts 10-15 months.

2. Business Cafe – Run by someone who is not particularly into coffee or cafe ‘culture’, but knows how to run a service business. Usually savvy enough to leave coffee/cafe decisions to someone else. Likely have broader menu than just coffee drinks. On the ball about fixing things.

3. Passion Cafe – People love coffee and will do anything to keep store running, like it is their baby or puppy. Similar to the Strip Mall, but the owners are more earnest, and have quit their jobs and invested all savings into cafe. Trying too many things at once to make everyone happy, they burn out in 8-10 months, putting up a sign that says ‘coming back soon’. Probably would be the type of cafe run by most contributors to cafe tableaux.

4. BoHo – Mismatched chairs and cups. Lamps on tables. Menu is hand written in chalk cute names for ’specialty’ drinks that every other cafe also has (ex, espresso shot in coffee: red eye, shot in the dark, dive bomber, brown star). Meets most people’s conception of a cafe, because it is what they would see on tv or movies, but it is not the actual ‘cafe’ they go to (see 5).

5. Corporate Lite – Not a chain, yet, so you don’t feel like a complete asshole for visiting, but you do feel like an asshole lite. Menu is a printed sign that matches the furnishings. They have store-bought prints framed on the wall. A logo is printed on cups and paper takeaway menus. They are most likely to open a drive-thru.

6. College Cash Barn – Near university or similar high traffic area. Owners don’t have to do anything special but keep the electricity on, and the money just pours in the doors. Could also fit into other types’ classifications, which is unfortunate in the case of Strip Mall or Corporate Lite, as they will last for years.

This is a work in progress; feel free to add your own.

For the sake of disclosure, and to defuse a barrage of charges of elitism and class warfare, it shall be known that this tableauxist was himself a barista for six (6) years and in that time was only gruff with a single customer – in a case that was justified. All disgruntle and crabbiness was directed at the other baristas, until the day I had to quit, so as to avoid being ‘taken outside and taught how to shut [my] mouth‘, but that is a tableau for another day…

However, it was mildly soothing scene in one respect; I was liberated from a specific hunger: soymilk was cheap and tofu was local; I was finally freed from my steady diet of sour apples, budget digestive biscuits, and boxed multi-vitamin ‘dryck’. On the other, hand I was marooned on a barrier island with only sporadic communication with my outside world, narrow as it is, without a bicycle for the first time since 2003, and obliged to a task too grim to describe in the pages of cafe tableaux.


Days were wasted traversing the island on foot to the county library, where I could attach my portable computer to the internet and frantically click through dozens of websites dedicated to polling of detestable groups – NASCAR Dads and War Moms – and to deconstructions of Youtube videos for Senate campaigns in states I never cared to otherwise know about, save for in my dreams of an exhaustive study of highway rest areas about which I have mused to everyone I have ever met.

It’s difficult to imagine now the public mood of those yond days in the context of what has followed. Voting is for suckers; there is no doubt about that, but the manufactured drama of elections can suck almost any cynic into the charade. Now we all know that it does not matter one way or the other who is acting as president when he or she is not doing jack shit, but back then, we were on pins and needles, wondering about some Aryan Nation maniacs assassinating a candidate, dreading the day an air-headed empty suit would succeed to the office upon the death septuagenarian Vietcong Candidate, and tasting something hypocritical in our mouths as the ‘grass roots’ candidate spent more than million dollars on one night of 30 minute teevee commercials.

Despite my obsession with the ‘national conversation’, in moments amidst the hours spent at the public library refreshing sites like the hysterical dailykos, the more rational fivethirtyeight, and even the crude wonkette, I pushed the keyboard to the back of my cubicle and scrawled a few ‘notes’ in longhand in the margins of my viking novel-in-progress, which, by the way, was conceived twelve (12) years earlier in a shower across the hall from Peter Zellner’s dorm room near Boston – not in Sweden the previous month.

It was this penciling of gibberish that caught the attention of one of the library maidens, one responsible for re-shelving audio tapes of Carol Higgins Clark works and giving out 30 minute passes for the computer stations, most likely because I was the first person she had seen inside the building not using a cell phone or arguing over the right to play World of Warcraft without headphones. After thirty days of my warming the same seat in the rear corner of the biography stacks, she approached me and asked what it is that I was always scribbling on a ‘graph paper’ notepad.

“it’s this story about these three months i spent building a cabin in the Ardennes”
“wow, is it true?”
“i only write autobiographies”

She stooped over my shoulder and scanned my spiral bound Pocket Notebook; I fanned my hands to cover most of the thumbnail drawings of battle axes and ravens.

“you should come to our short story salon, ok? we meet every week and exchange stories”
“is that something i can do online?”
“no we meet at a coffee house and give each other feedback”

I am not really one for a salon, but I am one for a comely young dish with a bookish look and, on occasion, a slight aura of crunch.

I don’t know how to compose short stories, either, but I do know how to lie about my name and how to steal things off the web. Thus, I was introduced to the salon as ‘Jagger Herzt Trefry’ before presenting several of my ‘Decay’ pieces the next week, fragments of a narrative edited within the bounds of Creative Commons license to remove the more lurid sexual innuendo in the source material.

It was after the presentation of one of these pieces one night at Sentient Bean, a piece in which I neglected to discern, and therefore expunge, a metaphor for the vulva represented by Sepulveda Boulevard as it climbs away from Venice, that the fine lass from the library approached my easy chair.

“ok, it’s really cool that a guy writer can be so in touch with his feminine side”
“ok”
“no i mean your story you read tonight, ok?”
“yeah that was like really hard to do. i don’t think i’ll do that again”
“dude you totally should. it was so awesome…all these other guys just write about spies and hating their fathers and stuff, ok”
“uhhhhmm, i do have some more things like this one, but it is pretty hard to read them aloud in front of these guys –”
“fuck those guys”
“–especially the guy in the fucking ed hardy shirt and crocs”
“dude those guys are losers, ok? you need to write more like that shit tonight, ok”
“yeah…maybe i will send you something.”
“that would be rad ok?”

I hauled ass back ‘home’ and scoured my namesake’s partner site for more of the effeminate compositions. The best piece with a woman’s touch that I could find was an sketch for a work of awkward erotica about a father and son. I bent the genders a bit and removed the most alarming segment – describing an episode under a tree on Xmas eve – then sent an email to the young library trick from a spoofed account intimating that I would be more comfortable sharing this story in person, on a hard copy, not digitally and infinitely reproducible, suggesting that we meet somewhere peaceful where she could read it without distractions “like maybe your apartment or something.”

Whilst I waited at her kitchen table, staring at her knees and other select parts, she turned over the last of the loose leaf pages onto which I had transcribed the holiday tale.

“do all your guys shoot themselves at the end?”
“no! it’s rare. i actually prefer the notion of a hanging –”
“god that’s morbid”
“–preferably with like a belt or the cord from a motel room blinds”
“dude”
“what’s the difference? in the long run?”
“it’s not funny ok”
“shit, i’m not famous for writing fucking comedies”
“well i have a thing about it because my dad was a suicide victim, ok?”
“hmm” there goes that.
“he did it after my mom contracted breast cancer –”

Jesus Fucking Christ. I wondered if I could text someone to call me with an ‘emergency’.

“– he couldn’t bear to see her all sickly and weak from the chemo, ok?”
“uh ok”

She shielded her face with her hand, fingertips on her forehead, as her eyes began to water. No! No! No! No! No!

“you know when i was in Sweden we had these lamps we had to sit under for like two hours a day so we wouldn’t kill ourselves…because it is dark there perpetually”

Her shoulders trembled as she gasped a silent sob; I looked past her neck at the clock on the stove that indicated only 20 minutes had passed since I arrived…

And when I awoke, I was alone, this bird had flown
So I lit a fire, isn’t it good Norwegian wood.

Shortly after 6am, I scratched out a note about needing to be “on set” at 8am and stuck it to the refrigerator with some ‘Poetry’ magnets spelling out ‘Anticipation Settles Accounts”. I swallowed a few gulps of pulp-free orange juice from the carton, swiped an Odwalla Superfood bar from the pantry, and crept into the hall. I held my breath as I turned the deadbolt to open the door and climbed along the iron handrail down to the sidewalk to avoid stepping on the creaky wooden stairs. Upon reaching the landing, I sprinted down the remaining brick steps and jogged around the corner towards Broughton Street.

I headed towards my uncle’s sweet shop near Habersham, where I napped on the sidewalk in front of the entrance until he arrived to open for business.  I begged him to loan me his Prius so I could drive back ‘home’, but naturally he refused, suggesting instead that I use the Islands Shuttle that takes people out to the beach from Emmet Park. After using a trip to the bathroom as a pretext to steal two cans of cocoa from his storeroom, I thanked him for the advice and ran to catch the shuttle.

Knowing that no place serving coffee on Tybee would be open and feeling a little gypped by the promise of ‘Super’ in the Odwalla bar, I implored the driver to let me exit the shuttle at the traffic light in front of Davis Produce and Circle K, and I walked the half-mile to Johnny Mercer at low tide, the path reeking of sulfur and the flinty stench found in an old tackle box or the shitter at a Captain D’s.

By ten o’clock, I had reached the ‘Islands Center’ strip mall, figuring this would be the closest I ever found myself to the Savannah Bagel Cafe at ‘breakfast time’, so I crossed the street at the sight of their mildewed sign and anonymous box of shit and stucco, dripped sweat all over their floor and tables as I drank overcooked coffee from a foam cup and ate the best rosemary and garlic bagel outside of New York City and West Los Angeles. I never again saw the interior of the island’s library.

“case study number two in why fairmount cannot sustain a decent coffeeshop…”

Saul Cups, 7:03:38 PM:
ugh

Saul Cups, 7:03:46 PM:
flying saucer sucks

Saul Cups, 7:03:47 PM:
big time

Saul Cups, 7:04:01 PM:
there isn’t a single TOLERABLE coffeeshop in my neighborhood

Saul Cups, 7:04:22 PM:
i’d rather be stuck at walnut bridge coffeehouse than mugs or saucer

thos. more, 7:04:42 PM:
where’s fsaucer?

Saul Cups, 7:05:00 PM:
26th and brown

Saul Cups, 7:05:06 PM:
it’s the place where i went one weekend

thos. more, 7:05:09 PM:
never heard of it

Saul Cups, 7:05:17 PM:
and people were talking about eating rabbit and venison

Saul Cups, 7:05:23 PM:
i decided to give it another chance

Saul Cups, 7:05:33 PM:
i arrived around 10 past 6

thos. more, 7:05:33 PM:
too bad we ran mojoe out of business

thos. more, 7:05:35 PM:
oh!

Saul Cups, 7:05:41 PM:
i knew it closed at 7

Saul Cups, 7:05:48 PM:
the barista says

thos. more, 7:05:48 PM:
what about that place by wf

thos. more, 7:05:53 PM:
java’s brewin’ ?

Saul Cups, 7:05:53 PM:
‘you know we close soon?’

Saul Cups, 7:06:02 PM:
‘um, like in 50 minutes?’

Saul Cups, 7:06:10 PM:
‘well, you’re welcome to hang out till then’

Saul Cups, 7:06:18 PM:
‘you mean, i’m welcome to hang out till you close?’

Saul Cups, 7:06:20 PM:
silence

Saul Cups, 7:06:28 PM:
fucking rude

Saul Cups, 7:06:33 PM:
and stupid

Saul Cups, 7:06:35 PM:
so i sit down

thos. more, 7:06:37 PM:
maybe they have a pre-close policy

Saul Cups, 7:06:43 PM:
just like last time

Saul Cups, 7:06:47 PM:
everyone there fucking knew each other

thos. more, 7:06:50 PM:
‘funny’, the same thing happened to me during my pleasant holiday in sweden

Saul Cups, 7:06:53 PM:
and were talking at each other from across room

thos. more, 7:06:56 PM:
‘we close in one hour’

Saul Cups, 7:07:03 PM:
about dumb shit

thos. more, 7:07:07 PM:
maybe their usual customer expects to sit there for 9 hours

Saul Cups, 7:07:11 PM:
the barista was the worst

Saul Cups, 7:07:22 PM:
talking at very high volume

Saul Cups, 7:07:27 PM:
and their internet was out

Saul Cups, 7:07:30 PM:
and he didn’t even tell me

Saul Cups, 7:07:34 PM:
i hate that place

Saul Cups, 7:07:38 PM:
it’s almost as bad as mugs

thos. more, 7:07:42 PM:
fuck saucers

Saul Cups, 7:07:59 PM:
when i write the tableau

Saul Cups, 7:08:04 PM:
it will start with

Saul Cups, 7:08:26 PM:
“case study number two in why fairmount cannot sustain a decent coffeeshop…”

Saul Cups, 7:08:51 PM:
everyone who lives in this neighborhood is a douchebag

thos. more, 7:09:28 PM:
you can just post this chat as the tableau

thos. more, 7:09:48 PM:
’saucers isn’t worth any more effort than an online rant’

Saul Cups, 7:10:05 PM:
yes

thos. more, 7:10:43 PM:
i’ll do it

Saul Cups, 7:11:22 PM:
i hope they go out of business

thos. more, 7:11:50 PM:
are you going back there this weekend?

thos. more, 7:11:55 PM:
to learn your lesson again?

Saul Cups, 7:11:56 PM:
no

Saul Cups, 7:12:08 PM:
the barista and some customer were having a debate

Saul Cups, 7:12:18 PM:
about whether one should feel sorry for the somali pirates

thos. more, 7:12:21 PM:
mugshots would be ok if they didn’t have the ‘restaurant’ and the sex creeps

thos. more, 7:12:44 PM:
hm

Saul Cups, 7:12:55 PM:
take away the bacon, the kids, the baristas and mugs would be fine

thos. more, 7:13:01 PM:
i don’t feel sorry for pirates

Saul Cups, 7:13:14 PM:
it was fucking absurd

Saul Cups, 7:13:34 PM:
you have my permission to post this chat as a tableau

thos. more, 7:13:41 PM:
i wish the seal snipers would set up on the ramparts of eastern state penitentiary

Saul Cups, 7:13:54 PM:
http://www.theflyingsaucer.net/blog1/

Saul Cups, 7:14:03 PM:
don’t include that part when you c&p

thos. more, 7:14:13 PM:
which part?

thos. more, 7:14:15 PM:
the link?

thos. more, 7:14:40 PM:
that site looks stupid

thos. more, 7:14:43 PM:
i closed it already

thos. more, 7:15:06 PM:
i expect a cafe site to have hours and info about fair trade coffee & soy milk

thos. more, 7:15:26 PM:
not a newspaper full of feeds the baristas think are hilarious

thos. more, 7:15:40 PM:
‘funny things chlöe found on gawker!’

Saul Cups, 7:16:00 PM:
i know

Saul Cups, 7:16:06 PM:
i meant don’t include part about snipers

thos. more, 7:16:13 PM:
?

Saul Cups, 7:16:18 PM:
i don’t want saul cups to have fbi after him

thos. more, 7:16:28 PM:
the fbi were on that sniper ship, too!

thos. more, 7:16:34 PM:
they were all in on it

thos. more, 7:17:01 PM:
those seals weren’t on the ship when that shit started

thos. more, 7:17:16 PM:
they were flown there,

thos. more, 7:17:28 PM:
and they parachuted into the fucking ocean!

Saul Cups, 7:17:35 PM:
i know

thos. more, 7:17:36 PM:
and had to be plucked from water and put on ship

Saul Cups, 7:17:36 PM:
i mean

thos. more, 7:17:42 PM:
is that the easiest way to get on a boat?

Saul Cups, 7:17:49 PM:
i don’t want anything about snipers in phila assoc with scups

Saul Cups, 7:18:07 PM:
that’s the last thing scups needs

thos. more, 7:18:19 PM:
i just meant i want fairmount hill to be safe from pirates

thos. more, 7:18:48 PM:
not that bacon dbags should be shot

thos. more, 7:19:24 PM:
oh dear, what is this shit

thos. more, 7:19:32 PM:
Google Latitude Introducing Google Latitude

thos. more, 7:19:38 PM:
‘See where your friends are right now
Enjoy Google Latitude on your phone, computer, or both.’

thos. more, 7:19:41 PM:
great

thos. more, 7:19:53 PM:
another tool for my stalkers

thos. more, 7:20:49 PM:
maybe next google will have a website where you can turn on your ‘friend’s’ webcam from your own browser

thos. more, 7:21:38 PM:
Google Bug enables you to turn your friends’ cell phones into listening devices from your computer!

Being in such a dour and surly mood perhaps is not the proper condition in which one should open up a new tableaux, but House One: Hider-In-The-House has crashed and my own newly self-inflicted daily project has proven impossible to break through. Unsatisfied, then, I focus my wrath upon Java Lords in lieu of other outlets.

I am surprised that JH has not already covered this place. Atlanta is more his town than mine, now, and there are not many other coffee shops left for him to tableau. I presume he is occupied by spending every free moment at Dr. Bronner’s or whatever that coffee place we went to after the Portman speech is called.

Whatever the case, I do not really have any place writing this tableau; I didn’t pay much attention to the operation of this shop when I visited. Both times I was full of potato and broccoli burritos from El Myr that I would have rather been purging in an alley or toilet room than having sink like stones in my bowels. Through the pain, there are a few things I vaguely recall noticing; maybe the reader finds them valuable:

• The cafe is open to the box office of a theater or concert hall.
• Some flyers for Phantasm.
• The coffee is from Cafe Campesino.
• The restroom is enormous (possibly due to association with theater.)
• A full scale crucifix lords over the outdoor seating area (shared w/ a falafel or Vietnamese restaurant).
• Some paper bags for sale as art (verified).
• Coffee served in paper cups(?)

What I definitely remember from both of my visits, the most important point regarding Java Lords, is that there were foxy ladies behind the counter – and each was accompanied by a male cockblocker who charged across the room to intercede us before said fox could take our orders.

The male cockblocker. He is a different animal than the female variety found at bars and parties dragging their more attractive friends away from hot guys. Still, you’ve seen the type. Guys who have no charm or charisma, so their strategy is serve as a wet blanket thrown over any interaction between their attractive female ‘friends’ and any approaching dandies from a local collaborative constructive. Imagine, if possible, a reversal of Blane’s and Ducky’s roles in Pretty in Pink. These guys reckon that their coworker will have an awful taste in her mouth, metaphorically, after each exchange with a customer, and will eventually give up and fall into the cockblocker’s embrace. It is a twisted Pavlovian exercise by the cockblocker, as he is responsible for the distasteful event to begin with.

For fuck’s sake, one of them was wearing one of those bluetooth earplug things for his cell phone when he took our orders! For a fuller description of at least one of the baristas, try searching for ’short yellow dress’ along with ‘handsome soymilk drinker’ on Atlanta craigslist missed connections.

In conclusion, I guess my points are that I did not spend much effort thinking about Java Lords before writing this, and that it’s a good thing some douchebag in a headset took my order because I wouldn’t have known how to talk to the girl in the yellow dress, in any event.

You were rocking a green and yellow ‘Brasilia’ shirt. You have a red hot body and lovely face to match. I was with someone, but it wasn’t my girlfriend. If you could hear us talking, you may have noticed I was giving her relationship advice! I would like to take you out sometime.

what day did you see the brasilia shirt?

Sunday

Haha, I’m pretty sure that was me- thank you for the compliments. If you don’t mind me asking, where did you see me ?

Well, whether or not it was you depends upon if you work at a coffeeshop, and upon the number that is on the back of the shirt.

Naturally, I work at Red Hook on 4th. Best coffee in Philly, I may add, and great vegan cheesecake.

The magic number is 8.

Yes, it was number 8!

By the way, I saw your shirt when was a customer at your coffeeshop on Sunday.

I appreciate the compliments. Thank you ! Say Hi next time, I’m not all that mean, really.

If I make it down there this weekend, I’ll definitely say HI.
You seriously are a gorgeous girl. Totally!
But don’t worry, I just posted as a joke to see what would happen; I’m not looking to hook up.
Anyway, hoping you respond…maybe asking for too much? Please?!
Have a good night!

While Ashley was chatting up his ’sexy barista’, trying to assure her that he was not in a gay relationship with me without going so far as to reveal that he has a wife (providentially, he had insisted that I stash his wedding band in a drawer in my chambre earlier in the morning), I took a look at the family-friendly flyers covering the door to the WC, where I noticed a flyer for a book, Consuming Starbucks, that was either being released at Joe or was being read at Joe or was for sale at Joe – I have no way of knowing without actually reading the entire flyer.

As I returned to my table, I whispered to myself that I should see if this book would be suitable for inclusion in Cafe Tableaux’s Recommended Texts. Moments later this mental note was lost as Ashley began his interrogations regarding the barista’s ‘availability’.
thos.: ‘Available for what?’
Ashley: ‘Dating, I guess’
thos.: ‘I don’t think she is interested in dating customers.’
Ashley: ‘Why not?’
thos.: ‘I’ve been a customer here for two years, and I haven’t discerned any interest in dating me’
Ashley: ‘Have you ever talked to her?’
thos.: ‘I talk to her every time I come here!’
Ashley: ‘What do you say?’
thos.: ‘I’ll have a coffee. Maybe a bagel. What do you think about my work?’
Ashley: ‘She knows your ‘work’?’
thos.: ‘It doesn’t seem so.’

I convince Ashley to sow his oats elsewhere, and, after his ‘emergency run’ to the restroom, we sprint up Baltimore Hill and shell out Ashley’s $4 for the trolley ride to this week’s BiMon SciFi Con.

After Ashley’s public humiliation at the hands of an anally-restricted, insecure toadie from Michael Graves’s office and a fruitless encounter with a hottie from Tennessee Tech or somewhere, we pick up Ashley’s coat and bag and head into the streets to investigate the promised ‘best bookstore in Philadelphia’. Three minutes after exiting the PSFS building and two-and-a-half minutes after realizing that we don’t need coats for a dérive from Center City to South Phila to Fairmount, we turn the corner at 12th and Walnut and see Joe Coffee Bar at the other end of the block.

Much like some people use the term ‘hipster’ – an indexical referrent meant to encompass all the music, clothes, stores, magazines, bikes, or bars an irritating person might consume – as an insult when the precise reason for the person being an irritant can not be found, I often fail to understand any way to describe architecture from the 1970’s without just using ‘70’s‘ as an adjective.

I think they used the term ‘contemporary’ at the time; I grew up – yes, Thos. lived in the 70’s – recognizing the mode as anything including 45-degree angles and cedar siding, and nothing in my architectural education came close to touching this era in US history, except perhaps a photograph of Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia (Fuck.) at the close of my Trachtenberg. To me this ’style’ is a blend of a stripped, muted reaction to both the hedonistic, drug-addled excesses (no more psychotropic colours) and the hippie, whole-earth movements (solar heating, ‘natural’ materials) of the 1960’s. Whatever the fuck academics like that prick back at PSFS might call it, it pervaded the mall food courts and office parks of my youth; even at the time, I knew it to be soulless and shallow.

Joe is stuck into such a distasteful shell. The space is undeniably uncomfortable, but it is neither campy enough to be kitsch nor offensive enough to be hated. Even looking at the logo, I get the idea that if Ralph Nader was a designer, he would put out such a cafe as Joe.

If not for the horses ambling down the street, towing carriages stuffed with tour guides in colonial-era suits, one might mistake this location for one of the cafes lining Memorial Drive which our Decatur tableauxists patronize with much relish, only without the neon-coloured Blenders or Frostee drinks.

This was not what I had expected from Joe. In the past, conducting research as we mapped our forays into the cafes of Philadelphia, Saul Cups and I had come across this modestly named coffee ‘bar’ on the web, and its stats were tantalizing: Fair Trade, yes; Organic, yes; Soymilk, yes; WiFi, yes. Finally, there was within reach a decent cafe not located in West Phila. We argued over who would review this establishment, yet, as weeks went by, exclaims were heard:
‘Why are we at White Place? We should be at Joe!’
‘I can’t believe I’m drinking shit from Tuscany, instead of checking out Joe!’
‘What did I drive to New York for? I haven’t even been to Joe yet!’

On the day that we eventually visited, our hopes were rapidly dashed. The coffee, soymilk, vegan treats and all the usual shit were fine, of course, but the environment was such an assault on anyone with well-developed visual acumen, it was impossible for a lazy Sunday of boning up on your Neruda much less get your Cryptoclassic decoded. We left with one sentiment in mind, the classic diatribe: ‘Fuck Joe’.

However, crossing the street with Ashley this sweltering March afternoon, it occurred to me that Joe is perfect for its setting. Adjacent to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and surrounded by middling offices conducting forgettable businesses, it is a spot ideally smoothed to ensure the monotony of the district. Blue button-down types who wear red ties are just barely abstaining from killing themselves as they take a break from their temp jobs upstairs. Folks who are watching their relatives die from gunshot-inflicted sepsis or who are getting paid to undergo experimental HPV treatment have too much on their mind to absorb an unfamiliar view. The locals must be able to drift from the cubicle to the chemotherapy lab to the hospital gift shop to the cafe to the Wendy’s across the street unimpeded by radical thought.

We never checked out that Starbucks book that has something to do with Joe, but we did verify that they are joined with Chapterhouse, Green Line Cafe, Kaffa Crossing, and a few other local cafes in Philadelphia’s Independents Coffee Cooperative, which is pretty awesome.

Satellite Coffeeshop is the exemplar for curbing one’s zeal for breaking off a review within a New York minute of sitting down in a cafe – i.e., spending 20 minutes in an easy chair and scribbling down a few vignettes about the room.

Had I done this, my pen would have gushed forth ink in a pattern of letters to make the most rosy-eyed anarcho-cyclist blush. On my first visit – discounting the few visits I made before Satellite moved from a stand in the defunct Firehouse Farmer’s Market to its current location – I exclaimed, aloud, that Satellite was my new favourite coffeeshop in West Philadelphia.

Satellite was, and is, everything that Green Line Cafe is not. The space is textured, colourful, and lively; the same is true for the employees. And the customers. And especially the music.

Whereas Green Line is lately overrun with upper-middle-class, upper-middle-aged, white breeders – a classification in which each component is not a fault, but when totaled create the most passionless, interchangeable automatons one can find in a freshly gentrified suburb. These zombi show up at Green Line late in the morning, tots in tow, apparently because sitting wide-legged a cafe is the ‘thing to do’, not because of any deliberated, personal decision made independently on their parts.

Unlike every other cafe in West Philadelphia, you do not have to smuggle in your own vegan margarine or Tofutti if you eat bagels at Satellite; you may wish to avoid the bagels, however, as they do not have a toaster and instead ‘grill’ the bagels in the same unwashed press as their cheese-filled wraps. The shelves are full of vegan cookies, brownies, and cakes. Most importantly, they have a number of varietal coffees through which they cycle each day, rather than a single bitter house blend.

Naturally, Satellite is indistinguishable from the multitude of college-area coffeehouses that groups like Citysearch or Zagat might call ‘funky’ just because the furniture doesn’t match or a barista might be heard cussing. Nevertheless, if you are already stuck in West Philadelphia, beyond the expanding borders of ‘University City’, it is likely that anyone* with whom you are hanging is going to be at Satellite, anyway.

Despite the spectre of Green Line fading after every visit to Satellite, the veneer soon was worn clear. The operation of Satellite is poorly oiled; they consistently are short of items they offer – for example: pesto, tomatoes, coffee. The clientèle are often as ridiculous as any you’ll find in a Center City Starbuck’s, and, at times, even the music can be powerfully awful**.

Having grown up with crusty punx; I barely noticed the customers draped in filthy costumes that are more patches than clothing. It is curious, but hitherto unremarkable that the number of the kids covered with paint is disproportionate to the amount of painting going on in the city. What cinched it for me was the second time I noticed a girl drinking coffee from a pseudo-Mason jar.

I’ve seen a slew of people bring their own travel cups or mugs into all manner of cafes. That is reasonable. In fact, Satellite knocks 50 cents from the price if you bring your own mug. The distinction here is the types of vessels which Satellite clients choose to bring: former containers for peanut butter, beans, or bruschetta. Drinking coffee from a glass jar is preposterous posturing beyond all rationality.

There is a reason that coffee mugs are porcelain or ceramic: thermal conduction. This lesson is not missed by these jar-drinkers, based on the method of gripping the jar by the rim with two finger tips they have developed to avoid a scalding wake up call.

I’ve never spoken to anyone at Satellite, so I merely can presume the motivations of these people. The only purposes I can imagine, based on the political positioning of the typical West Philly Kid, are matters of thrift and of ecology.

Make no mistake; I am cheap. I could squeeze the shit from a buffalo nickel. How it would please me to have one of those nickels for each time I’ve had to suffer derision from a fellow tableur because my shoes have a few holes, because my sweater is the ‘wrong’ brand, because I buy brake fluid from Pic’N'Save, or because I’m trying to get one more season from my bike tyres.

I understand well the attempt to draw parallels with ‘po folks’ of the Depression who could not afford glasses and had to reuse jam or Mason jars. However, people who lost their farm and can not afford to pick up a mug for pennies at Second Mile or One+Five probably would not be riding up to a cafe at 11am on a Gitane fixie and dropping $1.75 for 12oz of Sumatran, anyway. The faked deprivation is made naked by this contradiction.

Perhaps one is trying to ’save’ something by using one’s own jar. Are they saving Satellite’s dishwater? Presumably they use an equal amount of dishwater when they clean(?) the jar back at their squat. Are they saving some glass by reusing the jar? Now there is a pot of spaghetti sauce or bag of lentils that requires a new vessel. It is fair to say that no use of resources is being reduced by the use of the jar.

What could it be, aside from image? Is there any object more ill-suited for this use? Maybe the bicycle inner tube I tried to use as door trim for my F-150 qualifies; we’ve already established my frugality, and no one ever rode in the truck, anyway. Once I saw a 1954 Land Rover with a Budweiser tallboy serving as an oil filter; however, this contraption was fashioned in a resource-poor desert, and, besides, it actually worked. I’m sure the list of reprogrammed items is endless; but if there is a Top 10 of Inconvenient Attempts at Statement Making, the olive-jar-as-coffee-cup ranks high.

In any event, all my attempts at rationalism have been rendered moot by the guy who showed up one morning with a plastic tub – like those used to package hummus or fresh salsa – and filled it with hot coffee….

I still enter Satellite a couple of times a week, as, unlike other tableauxists, I frequently get the opportunity to hang out in coffee shops. Have I gotten too close to Satellite? Well, after my 100th order, no one working there has yet figured out that I get the same drink each time I visit – something not lost on the baristas at some nearby establishments. I remain at Satellite – in it, but not of it – curious of an evolving social phenomenon.

*anyone white
** playing at maximum volume at 7.30am a tape of a tape of a tape of an analog live recording of Aus-Rotten playing your roommate’s little sister’s basement in Minneapolis? unnecessary attempt at cred.

Coffee-centrism is obviously critical, but how can this be defined? Is it the amount of space on the menu and in the program devoted to coffee-based drinks? Is it the prominence of the espresso machine? Is it represented by keywords such as ‘bean’, ‘buzz’, or ‘grounds’ in the name of the establishment? Can the importance of coffee to the proprietors be judged based on whether the brew is served from an vaccum airpot, an urn, or a carafe?

Not suitable for cafe tableaux.

One branch of confusion stems from the misuse of the term ‘cafe’; businesses that may be more described as ‘bistros’ or even ‘restaurants’ include ‘cafe’ in their name, perhaps in an effort to make known the light-hearted atmosphere, assuring the slovenly-dressed patrons – typically averse to mature dining – that there will be televisions overhead and plastic chairs for seating adjacent to the parking lot. The term ‘coffeeshop’ seems interchangeable with ‘diner’ – a place where one would expect a mayonnaised sandwich to arrive with a pickle wedge and a pile of ridged potato chips.

There are, at least, some conditions that clarify what is unsuitable for a tableaux:

Orders are taken at your table.
There are tablecloths.
Food is prepared on a stove, to order.

If any of these rules apply, then unfortunately ’sNice is not suitable for review on cafetableaux. This reviewer personally finds this to be a shame, as ’sNice has proved to be a reliable base of operations on his late business sojourns to New York City – a place to comfortably while the hours between the arrival of the bus from the suburbs and the start of class. Though constantly busy, ’sNice is vast and generously spacious; aside from ska, the music is a generally pleasant background; and your hours can be sustained by Philly-Style Seitan sandwiches, Spicy Buffalo Soy Wrap, or a Smoked Tofu Panini. – finished off with vegan blondies, apple muffins, and cookie/soy cream sandwiches.

Considering that ’sNice may not be reviewed on CT, then, our discovery one morning of Grounded after the nigh-fiasco of stepping into Tartine, is all the more fortuitous, as it enables the dropping of ’sNice’s name into a review as well as serves as a foil for the neighborhood to nearby Tartine: we had come across Grounded shortly after being snubbed out of that misadventure, spurring effusive curses and angry vows to visit immediately upon the next arrival to New York City. With awareness of my propensity for losing my sense of direction, I shakily sketched a map onto the back of a business card assuring an unhitched return.

Although at least half of my entries into Grounded have been followed by an immediate exit, sans beverage, due to their eight tables are almost invariably occupied, Grounded is always worth the attempt, as it is a rare innocent cafe in New York. There is no ‘large coffee for here’; they will give you a mug and tell you to return for a refill. Slid into a space that was possibly once a garage, it maintains that notion of honesty; it neither obliterates the previous state of use nor fills a blank inauthentic pretenses. I wistfully imagine some anarcho-hippies being teleported from Missoula or Madison and finding the empty chamber ideal for their cafe. They write the prices for Fair Trade coffee and tofutti on the wall, hang their shingle above the door, and leave it at that. Warmly illuminated via a skylight, only the tacky – pervasive in the city – pay-as-you-go internet stations rouses me from my reverie and remind me of the tumultuous metropolis outside its door.

Taking refuge from Tuesday’s rain in ’sNice, I’ll try Grounded again Thursday.

The only unfortunate issue with Brewbakers is that it is located in Keene. Entering Keene from the north a couple of years ago, we had the impression that it was a small New England bible college town; on subsequent visits from the south, it became clear that Keene is a weekend shopping resort contrived for the taste of Massholes.

Our journey to this outdoor mall had its roots in the capitals of France, United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic. I had traveled to those villes solely for the fact that they were hosts to Country Life, a loose chain of vegan restaurants run by Seventh Day Adventists; every experience with Country Life in Europe had been phenomenally pleasant, and I sought to relive those days a bit, albeit perversely and from a distance. To this end, we peeled out of Waterville, Vermont, at 11am, disregarding every ‘Speed Limit’ sign on the highway to Brattleboro, letting the pedal off the floor only long enough to careen into rest areas for a few ‘Pay what you wish’ cups of Green Mountain.

I can not describe what was consumed at Keene’s Country Life. It was unmemorable. This Country Life is a buffet-style establishment; you pay a set fee and take what you can from the bar. My fear, which was fulfilled, was that we would arrive so close to closing time that the operators would be disinclined to refill the trays of food, leaving us with the day’s dregs – all the tofu and tempeh chunks would be filched out of the dishes, and only limp, oily slices of red pepper and onions would remain. We were given only one hour to hurriedly shove, without pleasure, massive amounts of pastes, soufflés, and patties into our mouths, frantic to consume everything in sight, lest rival customers scoop the last mounds of food onto their plates, leaving us with only scraps. We attacked the buffet with no holds barred, for the final insult was the disappearance of the previously sighted dessert bar; with no cakes for which to save room, our bellies were stuffed with breads and salads we might otherwise avoid.

Prime Roast

Disrelishing the idea of sitting in the car for untold hours with overfull stomachs, we decided to round the corner onto Main Street and investigate Prime Roast. The facade made it clear that Prime Roast was an overbearing cafe which seeks to orchestrate your experience in the manner of Slowdown Cafe; determining that we would not take a coffee at the establishment, we stepped inside to at least verify whether they actually roast coffee as their sign suggests, which they do. After taking stock of the wide variety of beans offered and flipping through their assortment of photo albums, we departed without beverages. Fortunately for our digestion, after a short stroll down Main Street from Prime Roast, we noticed a sign promising ‘organic coffee’ which we giddily followed to Brewbakers.

I have drunk a lot of terrible coffee. I have had expectedly terrible coffee, like they serve in Flying-J or Sheetz, and I have had a fair share of terrible ‘good’ coffee, like they serve in Mani’s or Green Line Cafe. Most of the time, though, I just drink cup upon cup of regular coffee without enjoying it, abiding by a philosophy that this is just how coffee is; is an unpleasant beverage to which we have grown accustomed. When I say ‘we’, I refer to those of us who drink coffee, and when I say ‘coffee’, I refer to the product of brewing hot water with ground coffee beans, not to sugary, syrupy milkshakes known as ‘lattes’. As such, I have not been the custom of consuming coffee that I have truly enjoyed.

Terra Nova’s Red House blend, then, is a personal watershed. Before Brewbaker’s I assumed in my ignorance that coffee had to be bad; after Red House I lamented that every cup before me was not Red House. Served in a mug which – as is proper – had been warmed before filled. Exhorting my non-coffee drinking companion to taste the brew, but not to taste too much, I scoured the Terra Nova display for bags of beans to pack for use at home but found no purchase.

The reinstatement of Country Life’s vegan dessert bar notwithstanding, I have no plans to revisit the nu-towne of Keene, but the proximity of the town to the more agreeable luxury destination of Brattleboro coupled with the urge to redeem a second chance at inquiring about the Brewbakers’ ‘Cafe Genera’ add to a strong case for a return.

The inexplicably sweltering restroom can not be worked easily into a tableau.