Coffee break

It’s two o’clock and my favorite coffee shop is full.

I must be in sync with the urban afternoon call for café time. I like this notion. Because in many ways, I am out of sync, I am “other” in this hip-and-cool find of a place.

For one thing, every other boy here reminds me of my son—especially the 20-something sitting at the bar, raking his fingers through long, tangled hair as he reads the Post. Maybe he’s just now decided not to let the hair go to dreadlocks, after all. He’s wearing shoes with no socks, pants rolled at the ankle, and though his look is perhaps a bit more studied than Tyler’s is, he gives a haphazard impression that is attractive and endearing.

At a nearby table, a delicately featured girl with a buzz cut reminds me of my daughter Clara, whose hair is undergoing radical change this year, from long to short, red to blond to purple and pink. The coffee shop girl is talking with a friend, but other tables are singletons, and all about the laptops. I feel old-fashioned, with my journal and my newspaper (and the 25 years or so I have on just about everyone) but being different seems to be the thing here so in a way I fit in as well.

And even if I didn’t, I love this place. Not only for the beautiful people (and I mean that in a creative way, not an LA way) but for the general vibe. Much of this is due to industrial-but-intentional, off-the-cuff décor, another study in unstudied style. There’s exposed brick that gives way to drywall that is chipping at the top to expose more brick. And cinderblock. Maybe intentional, maybe just disrepair. The space is long and narrow, and from where I sit, at the end of the counter looking out, that element is magnified by a dark rectangle of dropped ceiling that mirrors the service counter’s length. Framed photographs dot the uneven walls—a red Banksy-like stencil, a dock on a lake, three Buddhist statues.

Behind the counter, three skinny young guys are in perpetual motion, in shorts and torn tee-shirts, frothing milk and tamping down espresso grounds. The one who serves me is especially friendly: when I order cake with my cappucino, he says, “yeah, bring it on,” as if this is the best decision I’ve made all day.

It very possibly is.