(no subject)
Who: John Tracey (Kaa) and Sabine Llewellyn (Donkey Skin).
What: College applications are a pain.
When: The afternoon of Sunday, April 20, 2008.
Where: A coffee shop in midtown Manhattan.
Rating: G.
He liked the hole-in-the-wall places, the half-hidden and the proudly independent. Chain coffee, you could get anywhere, along with the chain decoration, the chain baristas, the chain Muzak, and the chain smell of corporate profit margins, like that of burnt and bitter distillate scraped out of a stainless-steel pot and served with a bright-eyed smile. John would take grungy and shabby soul over that any day, thanks.
This day found him inside a favorite haunt not far from the Upper East Side border of Central Park, personally balanced on the edge of an overstuffed armchair with a freshly refilled cup steaming amid the books open and overlapping on the table in front of him. The place wasn't that busy, despite its proximity to Fifth Avenue and its tourist honey pots; he had this small conversational grouping of furniture to himself, just another New Yorker in weekend mufti: tan sweater, blue jeans, scuffed work boots. Instrumental jazz played slow and fine overhead, and he idly hummed along as he flipped from one book to another and took notes on his cranky old laptop on a corner of the table.
What: College applications are a pain.
When: The afternoon of Sunday, April 20, 2008.
Where: A coffee shop in midtown Manhattan.
Rating: G.
He liked the hole-in-the-wall places, the half-hidden and the proudly independent. Chain coffee, you could get anywhere, along with the chain decoration, the chain baristas, the chain Muzak, and the chain smell of corporate profit margins, like that of burnt and bitter distillate scraped out of a stainless-steel pot and served with a bright-eyed smile. John would take grungy and shabby soul over that any day, thanks.
This day found him inside a favorite haunt not far from the Upper East Side border of Central Park, personally balanced on the edge of an overstuffed armchair with a freshly refilled cup steaming amid the books open and overlapping on the table in front of him. The place wasn't that busy, despite its proximity to Fifth Avenue and its tourist honey pots; he had this small conversational grouping of furniture to himself, just another New Yorker in weekend mufti: tan sweater, blue jeans, scuffed work boots. Instrumental jazz played slow and fine overhead, and he idly hummed along as he flipped from one book to another and took notes on his cranky old laptop on a corner of the table.