What’s hotter than hot? Drinking black coffee in Omaha in August. With little else to do but bounce from shop to shop a 2PM, post-lunch, cup was inevitable. The shops so far under my belt were bleak, businesslike affairs with none of the desperate stranded youthfulness I had mythologized for Omaha after blindly pointing my finger to the map in preparation for my summer holiday. On the coma-end of a gastronomical daytrip to Athens, shuffling around the city, we were approached by a youth in youth costume who halted us in the street. “Where is the in place, hey? What goes on in this city? Where are the kids? What’s the secret handshake?” He was asking the wrong ‘kids.’ I’m sure he eventually found what he was looking for. I’ve never been on the inside track with the kids even when I was one. No wonder Omaha looked as sad and baked as any other summer place that unfolds around me.

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