Maeanders

We spent the weekend at the Harbor. The weather was great and I was able to devote a fair amount of time to wandering around the city.

As I have noted in other posts I occasionally like to spend a couple of hours in a coffee shop, either with friends (for a gab session) or alone (sorting out my thoughts on what I’m currently reading and writing). My favorite place has been changing lately. It’s in an excellent location, right across the street from a popular urban market and adjoining a very up-scale residential neighborhood. It does a very good business and wins “best of” awards and such.

Lately the shop has begun to attract large numbers of twenty-something, stay-at-home moms. About nine o’clock [just after their husbands leave for work] women descend on the place with their toddlers to socialize and it begins to resemble a day-care center. Then about ten o’clock businessmen begin to filter in for informal meetings and the place changes again. It’s hard to concentrate when some young guy is pitching an idea to his boss, or some salesman is trying to close a deal, or someone is conducting a job interview at the next table. Then comes the lunch crowd and the place is packed. By that time, though, I’m usually long gone. On weekends the shop fills up so early that there’s no point in going there.

So I’ve been looking for a place that is a bit more conducive to sitting and thinking. I may have found one. It’s another coffee shop, just about three blocks from the one I usually frequent, on the edge of a rapidly gentrifying, but not yet exclusive, old working-class neighborhood. It’s much smaller and doesn’t do nearly the business of my old favorite and has undergone at least two changes in ownership in the past few years. The local paper describes it as a “funky neighborhood place that wants to be something more.” I kinda like it. It’s the sort of place where regular customers wander behind the bar and serve themselves.

The day I was there the shop had several customers but wasn’t crowded. There was the usual in/out, on-their-way-to-work trade, and a few old men sitting alone and reading the paper. There were about half-a-dozen young men sitting at the bar staring intently at newspapers and some middle-aged women sitting and chatting in small groups. There were also a few people sitting alone working on computers [ah, my kind of folk]. I found a spot in a corner, unpacked my computer, and got down to figuring out a graceful way to end the chapter I’m currently struggling with. The only problem was the sound system. The owner is heavily into urban blues and “Screamin’ Jay” is not good for serious thought processes. [“…because you’re MIIIIIIIINE!!!” – shudder.] But, that’s what I-pods and Bose headphones are for. I cocooned with Brahms and got a lot of work done before packing up and heading home.