Coffeehouse-Hunting

I just wanted a coffee shop. A cute, quaint little shop where I can get a mocha and waste a rainy afternoon with a good book. And I'd like it not to be a Starbucks.

I don't really have anything against Starbucks. As a quick break from work, it's nice to have one just around the corner. When I'm out walking and it's cold, it's nice to know that I'm never more than 3 blocks from a hot drink/hand warmer. And every Christmas, I get really, really excited when Peppermint Hot Chocolate reappears on the menu and they start handing out red cups (Yes, I am aware that one can order peppermint hot chocolate at any point throughout the year, but I don't because it's way more special at holiday time.) But for a rainy Saturday afternoon when I just can't spend another minute in the apartment, Starbucks just doesn't cut it.

As soon as I moved here, I asked a good friend who lives in my neighborhood to recommend a good coffee shop. Her response was to rank the local Starbucks's according to service, comfort, and crowdedness. I said, no, I was really looking for a nice independent coffee shop. She looked at me like I'd grown a second head and said "They've been gone for years. They're all Starbucks now."

How sad! Where's my Central Perk? I want a couch in a coffee shop with my permanent butt-print on it, just like Chandler must have had. I want the same guy to serve me coffee for 10 years (although if he were slightly less odd than Gunther, I would not be opposed.) Where do people have first dates in this city? "Let's meet for coffee at Starbucks" sounds a lot less romantic and unique than "Let's meet for coffee at Lois's Coffee Shop." Heck, someone could tell you meet them at the Starbucks at 48th and 3rd, and when you got to that corner, you'd have 3 choices. How tragic if someone missed out on the love of his or her life because each person was waiting in a different Starbucks. This could happen people! If Starbucks' over-expansion keeps me from meeting my soul mate, I will never, ever, ever forgive. Even if they offered me Peppermint Hot Chocolate with extra whipped cream.

Gee, Officer Krupke...

Fact: (TM Dwight Schrute) When Leonard Bernstein first took it into his head to create West Side Story (and what a wonderful idea that was, too. Who'd have ever thought that Shakespeare's most ridiculous tragedy could be so vastly improved with just a few crappy haircuts, bad Puerto Rican accents, and references to "rumbles" in the alley?) he was thinking of my neighborhood. That's right. In fact, he was thinking of the public housing project next door to my building, and over which my bedroom window looks. I don't really think much has changed in the intervening 50 years.

Sure, I've never seen a knife fight out my window, but there remains a sense of quiet foreboding mixed with desperation. In a city where no one stands still, lanes and alleys of this project always have at least a few stationary figures, no matter what time of the day or night. Just standing. Staring. Sometimes whistling, sometimes talking, but always waiting. And I don't know for what. For "something's coming I don't know what it is but I'll know soon as it shows?" For "Tonight, tonight, I'll see my love tonight?" For something slightly more ominous, like "A boy like that, who'd kill your brother?"

I see thousands of people a day, on the streets, on the subway, at the store, in the office, but they're always, constantly, inexorably moving, and there's something shockingly foreign about these people who just stand still. I watch them out of the corner of my eye as I stride confidently through the alley back to my apartment, my apartment which is literally 200 feet, but might as well be 200 light years away. My world is not their world, and when I take that short path, I know that I am nothing more than a guest in their strange and immobile world. I wonder what they're world is like, but in the end, I wonder if perhaps, I don't really want to know.

This is not quite what I had in mind...

This is not quite what I had in mind.

See, I arrived in the city not all that long ago, full of big plans and big dreams (Let's face it. Is there any other way to arrive in this city? I defy you to find me someone arriving in JFK or LaGuardia or (God forbid) Newark for the first time who isn't bursting with hopes for a fabulous future.) Right now, all I've got is big debt, tiny apartment, and big problems.

In a city full of big dreamers, how do you keep your feet on the ground (and do you even want to, considering you'll probably step in something gross before you'be walked 10 steps?) And in a city full of cynics, how do you remember what it feels like to fly (without paying a visit to the 420 lounge on a Saturday evening?)

Start at the beginning. This is one story out of millions-- 8 million just in this city. My attempt to make sense of a foreign world. My failures and triumphs and ultimate disillusionment-- everything I learned from the movies is wrong. At the end of the day, there's only one conclusion: my life is not a movie!

Hollywood lied to me...

I'm the first to admit that most of my ideas about life come from the movies. Or TV. Which is ironic when you consider that for the vast majority of my 20-odd years, I have been without a television set. In fact, even now as I write this, settling into my new apartment in this grand city, I find myself too poor to afford cable TV, reducing me to a steady diet of whatever the networks are offering online and whatever was on sale at Best Buy last week (at least if I buy it, I get to keep it forever.) My parents' early efforts to prevent the rotting of my brain were rewarded by my love of literature, but offset by the fact that since becoming (ostensibly) an adult, I have yielded to a long-supressed voracious apetite for all things on the screen, big and small, and not even the good stuff. I'm way more likely to enjoy the cheesy rom-coms, Lifetime Original Movies, and teen dramas than anything that approaches cerebral, intellectually stimulating, or even, let's face it, of high production values.

And yet, as I venture out into the great unknown, I've learned nothing with more certainty than the fact that Hollywood has lied to me. My life is not glamourous like the Sex and the City girls, or entertaining like the Friends. I don't have a bar like Cheers, a butler like the Nanny, or even a shrink like Frasier. And that's just the small screen. I also don't have neighborhood like in You've Got Mail, a gay editor to solve my problems like in My Best Friend's Wedding, or a hot boss like in Working Girl (although to be fair, I also don't have a horrible boss, like The Devil Wears Prada.)

So thanks are due to you, Hollywood, for the lies, the laughable inaccuracies, and the unrealistic expectations about life, love, and city living. You have made me so wise.