As Tilt Coffeeshop was visited by two (2) Cafe Tableauxists simultaneously, we decided to post dueling tableaux, as a sort of ‘He said, he said’ experiment - a look at the divergent, opposing, and/or confluent views of a shared experience:

This was the first shop I had visited with Thos. since Mani’s Santa Monica in the fall of 1998, about 9.5 years ago, that neither of us had previously visited. This experience was pretty much the same as that one, although fleshed out a bit more by 10 additional years of repertoire rehearsal. We bickered and picked the place apart while trash-talking about people like Grace Lau, who, I would imagine, we would have just begun complaining about 10 years ago at Mani’s. It doesn’t really bother me that so little has changed. It is pleasant in a way that there is a constancy in the personality of the independent coffeeshop, even the new ones that keep stacking up on top of each other in the gentrifying corners of the country, that refreshes my spirit like bullshitting with an old friend. (more…)

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usually a place provokes a narrative of memories, a chain of things that had happened before the tether that place to a mess of things from the past. stringing those together in a text is best left to those with more time and those named proust. koffee is the first shop under my oeuvre of tableaux that was recommended to me by someone other than google, a former new havenianiter i suppose, im not quite sure. there was no description or reminiscence in the recommendation, just the name, which i had to follow up on google. so in a way it was still my find. rather than string all of the bits together i will just throw the coins on the table and see what they add up to. you will find the place yourself no doubt, or already have, and i would hate to ruin it for you; its a treat. (more…)

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Autumn, near Halloween, in a strange town, strange to me and strange somewhat in its postured image for itself, on a Friday night and saturnine day, finds kooks aplenty roaming the streets. My colleague, who was in Seattle this same weekend, remarked that he saw people with the troll under the bridge made up and in costume, but who could say whether it was for Halloween or if he had in fact seen ‘the creature’ and its horde. In Asheville, the revelers were almost certainly of the seasonal ilk, and their self-conscious theatrics made for uncomfortable strolling but for delightful observation. Things were amiss, Bean Streets was gone, and of course, years in the grave, my beloved Interstate Motel only a memory. We stood in the window of Downtown Books & News late after closing looking for the cat who lived there and wondered whether bookstore cats actually live in the bookstores or whether they go to a home at night. He wasn’t there and we hypothesized that he had died in the couple of years since we had seen him last. Across the empty street lights were on in Izzy’s Coffee Den and I questioned whether I was ready for the new. (more…)

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In the Boy Scouts I was a member of the Order of the Arrow. When someone asks me what it was I tell them it was an ‘elite camping squadron.’ I don’t quite recall what it was, but membership required participation in an ‘ordeal,’ which, among a vow of silence and manual labor, consisted of sleeping out under the stars with no food, water, or tent by yourself where ever you were instructed to sleep. In retrospect… not much of an ordeal at all. When I went camping just west of Cherokee in the Smokies I believe I finally earned my status in the squadron. My bright idea to backpack in away from the RVs and rabble for a quiet night in the woods backfired when the fabled black bears of the area took an interest in our site. Miles away from anyone, we spent the night dead still and silent, mentally rehearsing our primal screams inside our tent and listening to the creatures shuffle and gallop around, intermittently grunting and groaning and sniffing. My hand never left my camp shovel. At one point one of the beasts trotted around and fell silent in a thicket near the tent where I was sure it lay in wait. The first bird song of the morning was beautiful and unzipping the tent fly to see a blank forest gave me pause to revalue my life. We got the fuck out of there shortly after sunrise and decided to check out the coffeehouse we had seen driving through Cherokee the previous morning. (more…)

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I have roots in New England but they are that: roots (buried and distant). I sense an affinity for the region or at least some historical connection that is either received or misapplied. One thing I have never felt about the region is ownership. It takes me very little time to feel like I have my feelers into a place, a geographic confidence, and some sort of observational baseline from which to string out analogies and sort memories. New England has always been a place that others have given to me but I still have never reined in. So on my second visit ever to Connecticut my aimless experiences were stolen by the obligations of a family wedding and the first words spoken to me on the trip: “We haven’t seen you since you got sick with the flu in our attic room (the other time I had been in Connecticut).” (more…)

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gray kiser has told me about a curious phenomenon he has noticed in mexico. apparently every single place of business has a single step at its front door, no ramps, no warnings, no mercy! being somewhat of an architecture buff i found it very interesting but could not recall noticing it during my brief visit but thought it fit in pretty well with the sort of chaos tempered against old-world charm. perhaps it was a remnant from the days before storm sewers or from people swabbing their stoops, or perhaps it was the little touch that gave you the feeling of ‘entry’ into the place. whatever the root, it awakens a sort of nostalgia for simpler, less litigious and more human times. these days anywhere that has been able to preserve a walkable downtown of the mayberry ilk, no matter how theatrical and spurious, gives me the license to feel a little bit comfortable walking slower than my typical restless-leg-syndrome pace. (more…)

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I am filled with preconceived notions and unfulfillable expectations. It is no place’s fault that they fall short. Certainly every place is loved by someone just like every person, no matter how objectionable I might find them, usually seems to stir themselves up a mate. I like things that many people would find uninteresting. One of my favourite parts of Mexico City was the piles of garbage and the guy selling cellophane tape on a towel by the Zocalo. Some people love Starbucks and some people love shopping for CDs. I went to the Mission district to buy records and be breezily caffeinated in a gentle coffee shop. After tearfully leaving Aquarius Records empty handed with the kind of embarrassment a kid has making an uninformed off-color boast to an older crowd and being shut down, I tasted the air in search of some blackjo and did not have to go far to hail Ritual. Although not the breezy and oddly light-filled tomb of afternoon hot beverages that is Dr Bombays or Chapterhouse, it redeemed the BART trip for me with its concept. (more…)

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I walked into Xhedos within 15 minutes of finishing my coffee at Java Hutt just up the street. I had actually parked in front of Xhedos but Hutt was the place I had referenced on the web from Portman’s Renaissance Center back by the river in Detroit before heading out on the highway to Ferndale. Also, from the outside, I was not quite sure Xhedos was a coffee establishment, it seemed more clearly to be a thrift store cum poetry slam venue, but there was some sort of tightrolled filthy sophistication about it that made me walk by a few more times like a square. (more…)

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Although I try my damnedest to creep the coffeeshops local to my home, it often ends up feeling like a sad chore that fits into the rote rolling through roads and places that disappear because I have seen them thousands of times, and I do not like to do that to special places like coffeeshops. Or perhaps I just like being in my house. I still drink coffee, but I do it on my terms and I can do it in a chair that I like to read in or in front of my machine or desk. On the road I have no choice. Moreover, the little voyages to find these new shops act as conducting bodies in a lengthier consumption of the locale. This is similar to my reflections on bookshops in my hometown, at which I rarely bat an eyelash unless I am parlaying a Corrin 7″ into a used Proust. The distant coffeeshop supports a romance beyond these utilitarian workaday conceits. Thus, I nestled two trips to Cafe Verde into a visit to Detroit. (more…)

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