cast of characters:

pop: seasoned world traveler, coffee aesthete, perfectionist
son: uptight prosewriting provocateur
wanda: mountain woman
soulpatch: failed SCAD hack, opportunist, venice beach reject
cashier: current SCAD student
ms. soulpatch (offstage): condescending masculine female

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Every two or three months, I emerge from my basement chambre to stretch my legs in a journey across town for a perusal of the WW2 section at Book Trader and an attempt to relive my Paris years through a falafel at Maoz. Such a self-indulgent exercise is justified by predicating the trip upon a work session in Old City Coffee.

Old City appears to be an inviting place for work; it is well lit and spared from excessive accoutrement, being instead fitted with uniform, sturdy furnishings; the seating is in a room separated from the rowdy preparation and ordering area by a short hallway (see Novel Cafe). The only adornments upon the walls are reproductions of images and articles representing pleasant working environments on coffee farms at the turn of the century, a time when, in fact, most coffee was picked by slaves under murderous conditions. The lack of distractions and abundance of open wireless networks couple to suggest a suitable work environment — at least, this is how it appears in the abstract form buried in the recesses of memory of previous visits.

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there is precious little i can walk to in my ‘neighbourhood.’ although i am honored to visit the candler discount mall (as seen in ‘cannibal apocalypse’) on a biweekly basis, the commercial strip from glenwood to memorial on candler has no less than 6 hairbraiding shops, 3 pawn/title loan shops, and one new place called “crabby d’s.” so much for my plans of opening a blackmetal cattery and coffeebar there.

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The coffeeshop has a different function for the tourist, the dériver, and any transient functionary than it does for the local, or the inhabitant of the city the shop is in. It is less receptacle and more passage. In the home environment, the coffeeshop is a wall, or chamber, against which the imbiber is bounced, from their home to their home. Even with intermediate stops, the shop maintains a fixed relationship to the home, unless the transient is intentionally fragmenting his route in order to alienate hisself from the familiar distances and sequences that tie him to his home. Lost in an unfamiliar city, we have no need to willfully corrupt our sequence, for submission to this loss is itself the presage to surprise and disorientation.

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