(no subject)
20 January 2007:
=NYC= The White Room - Greenwich Village - Manhattan
A small, comfortable little place, this: a minuscule cafe of little fame and ridiculously good coffee. The main room is small and rather inordinately comfortable, prevented from being claustrophobic by a theme of whites in the decor and the fact that the regulars - a sundry bunch of academics, artists, lawyers, workpersons, and every other group New York has to offer - are generally quietly occupied with coffee and good, solid plates of food. There is no theme, no specialized and exotic varieties of coffee or tea; the atmosphere is thick with cigarette smoke and comfort, not desperate sophistication.
It's a chilly Saturday midmorning in Greenwich Village. Despite recent bouts of mayhem in the news pertaining to this specific area, the denizens of the Village aren't about to abandon their indie artsy credibility by forsaking coffee in favor of avoiding future mayhem. Thus, the White Room is doing a steady business doling out coffee and muffins. They have orange juice, too, but the Californian on crutches who has just found his way to the front of the line does not order anything with any citrus DNA.
Not long off work herself, and a few basic errands out of the way, Kathryn decides it's definitely time for some coffee and breakfast. She hasn't been to this coffeeshop before (that she recalls anyway) but it looks like her sort of place and heads in anyway. As she takes her place at the end of the shortish line, someone up ahead catches her attention, and she cranks her neck, just waiting for the man on crutches to turn enough so she can see his face. He does look a bit familiar.
Andre does indeed turn around upon ordering. He has a routine with coffeeshops: order, then lean against the side counter until the order is delivered. This maneuver is particularly of use this morning, in that the precise timing of his turn causes him to avoid sneezing on the barista. This is not a titanic germ spewer sneeze, and he's able to release one of his crutches for long enough to cover his nose and mouth, but sneeze it is. Which could also help serve purposes of recognition.
As he turns Kathryn grins as she does recognize the man. "Hey!" She calls a greeting, half side-stepping out of the line so he can better see who's calling at him, waving a gloved hand at him as she does.
Andre sniffs, demoting a napkin to the role of kleenex and dabbing at his nose. Kathryn's shouted greeting reaches him just at this point, and since the one hand is already not occupied with crutch-holding, it waves back. Kleenex in tow. Lovely. "Oh, hey!" he calls back. "You're doing better, too, I see."
"Yeah, still trying to play catch-up from it, but yeah, at least I've returned to the land of 'human'." Kathryn laughs. "You're looking a lot better though." She inches forward as the woman between her and the counter does as well. As she's speaking Kathryn's already pulling off her gloves and rummaging for her wallet in a pocket. Which pocket is the question here.
"The land of /human/? Dunno if I've ever quite qualified for that!" Andre jokes, depositing the kleenex in a conveniently-placed trash can. The hand raises again, and he waves an index finger in a little circle next to his ear. "Good that you are, though." The hand returns to the crutch. "I mean, feeling better."
Kathryn laughs again. "You /know/ what I mean!" She looks again to the menu, then back to Andre. "Okay, so you been here before? What's good here?" She asks.
Andre nods, shifting slightly along the counter as another person slides along it to wait for her own order. "I've been too sick to be silly. Allow me to chuck literal out the window!" He grins, then looks sideways and up toward the menu. "The white chocolate mocha's really good. Fits with their name theme, so I guess they're obligated to have the best one in town."
"Hm. That actually sounds pretty good." Kathryn nods, coming up to the counter next, directing her attention to the barista. "Hi! Yeah, I'll try the white chocolate mocha. One of the small ones. And one of those muffins, the cranberry ones." Kathryn points to illustrate which one she wants. Money exchanges hands, and Kathryn slides over, past the other woman to stand on the opposite side of Andre while she waits. "Funny I've not found this place before, I spend quite a bit of time around here." She comments.
The college student standing next to Andre should be glad that Kathryn has not boxed her in. That would be a major red zone for residual germs otherwise. Andre turns his head away from the menu and toward Kathryn, shifting his grip on the crutches. "I come here a lot. I'm not too picky about my coffee, but here's close and good. And usually pretty quiet."
Kathryn gives a slight sniffle, the tail end of her cold, as she nods, catching the tip of her nose on her coat-sleeve. "I hear ya. I've tried out tons of places, just don't do Starbucks. It's like they're trying to take over the world or something." She quips, though grinning at the same time to show she's merely joking. Well, mostly anyway.
Andre hunches down slightly, brows flattening, corners of his lips twitching. He speaks in a conspiratorial whisper. "Don't let them know we know that. They're setting all the media running around about terrorism to distract us from their aims."
Kathryn leans in closer, not completely able to stifle the laugher that keeps bubbling over despite trying to match his low tone. "Really? You know, that'd make perfect sense. Perfect cover for them." Her eyes dance from the silliness of this all. "I say we form some kind of elite...coffee-snob squad, and banish them back to Seattle or wherever they came from." She nods knowingly at her suggestion.
Considering the persistence of sinus crud clinging to the back of Andre's throat, his voice is a little gravellier than usual when he speaks softer. This adds credibility to the conspiracy-spy-movie potential of the situation. "That's the motive!" he continues, lifting an index finger off one crutch. "They're spreading out to the rest of the world so that when Mt. St. Helens and the Cascadia Subduction Zone go off again and their home base is destroyed, they will still have power!" Geek much?
Kathryn gives him a mock wide-eyed stare. "Whoa. It's just like James Bond! But with coffee! I always thought world domination would come about through aliens or something. But coffee. Devious man. Very devious!" She cracks up again at this, laughing and shaking her head.
"I suspect that's their point exactly!" Andre is able to maintain the straight lines of eyebrows and mouth for about three more seconds before he breaks into a notably congested snicker and adjusts his posture back to something that won't make both his leg and his back hate him.
"So the aliens are in on it too." Kathryn seems to muse this over, rubbing her chin. "I'm tellin' ya man. It all makes sense now." She glances over her shoulder for the status of of her coffee, then grins back at Andre.
The barista is not an alien. There is a tattoo on the side of his neck that could, to the nerdiest of nerds, be taken as borglike, but his speech is inflected with the most New Yorky of accents. He hasn't even been assimilated into The City; he came by it naturally. And it is not with any sort of force to join anything that he announces the presence of two white mochas. If anything, he's too bored to try and assimilate people. But it is not Starbucks, so all is well! Andre crutches his way over to the pickup counter, noting back toward Kathryn, "Seriously. We could make big bucks exposing this."
Kathryn takes her order with a nod and murmured thanks, taking her cup and muffin towards a clear table, slowing up to let Andre keep pace with her. “No kidding. I mean, we could do like one of those news rag spread things. You know, like those ‘Satan’s skull found in an ice-berg’, and ‘Man gives birth to alien baby dog.’. If we can’t get real photos, I’ll Photoshop some.” She takes a cautious sip of her coffee, sticking out the tip of her tongue as it’s still a little too hot yet.
Andre is indeed moving very slowly, despite his increasing practice in balancing a full cup of coffee while hobbling on crutches. It's like a magic trick! He does make it to the table and slide the cup onto it with minimal spillage, though. He lowers himself into a seat and tucks the crutches under it, then leans forward and blows on the coffee, dispersing some of the steam. "Photoshopping's easy enough for those things!"
Kathryn takes a seat as well, nodding around an over-large mouthful of muffin. "Yeah, ish rw.." She pauses, swallowing, then trying to speak again. "Yeah, it really is. I mean, I'm not like some hot shot graphic artist or something, but I play with it."
Andre blows on the coffee again, then lifts it slowly, taking an experimental sip. "I haven't played with it too much, but I blog. You take graphics, I write the text, we're in business!" The coffee is not too hot, and he takes a bigger sip.
"Right on!" Kathryn grins. "Shouldn't be too hard to find a Starbucks logo image of all things." Another mouthful of muffin as she continues to look amused. "And people think I'm strange and have a weird sense of humor. Can you believe that?" She laughs, teasing again.
Andre takes another sip of coffee, his hands cradling the big white cup, protective of the vital caffeine source. "O RLY?" Andre says. He enunciates it exactly how it's spelled on the internet, and then snickers. "I'd bet nobody comments on my blog too much because they all think I'm battier than cave full of guano."
"Mine I just randomly post crap that makes no sense to anyone but me. But it's not really for anyone else to read anyway I guess." Kathryn takes another drink of the coffee, this time it's at a much better temperature. "Seriously though, I like 'weird' people." She made quoty fingers in the air at 'weird' "The normal ones are Boooor-ing." She drags out the word, then grins again. "And I scare 'em."
Andre shrugs lightly. "I never expected to have an audience anyway. It's just more fun to make up obviously fake reasons for why I have no comments." Sip. "And other obviously fake things in general. Nice change from the real news. A good kind of scary."
Kathryn nods. "Yeah, I get that. And I mean, as long as you're not planning on literally knocking people off or something, it's all just fun. You'll have to tell me where it is, I wanna read it now." She adds after a moment.
"Only if I get to read yours, too," Andre notes, grinning. He puts the coffee down by its lonely self on the table, then rummages through his jacket pockets. He eventually comes upon a pen, which he uses to scrawl his website and email address on a paper napkin. He slides this toward Kathryn, then picks up his coffee again. Prrrecious.
Kathryn takes the napkin and looks at it, nodding. "Alright cool!" She tucks it into a pocket of her jacket, then yawns, stifling it with the back of her hand. "Sheeze, excuse me. This graveyard shift is /killing/ me." She admits ruefully. "Guess I should probably go home and sleep, but first." She pulls a pen out of another of her pockets, then scribbles a whole bunch of stuff onto one of the napkins, blog URL, several IM addresses, one e-mail address, phone number. "IM or call or e-mail me or something sometime. Whatever's your thing. We can hang out or watch bad movies or something if you want." She offers, pushing the napkin across the table towards him.
Andre considers the writing on the napkin, then folds it neatly before it and the pen go back into the near black hole that is the pocket of his jacket. He'll find it again eventually! "Bad movies are never a bad idea!" he confirms. "And you can feel free to poke me on the 'net as well. Have a good nap! Don't let the aliens get you in your sleep!"
"Depends. If they're nice aliens, it might be kinda cool!" Kathryn laughs as she gathers up her coffee and the rest of her muffin. "Catch ya around later then!" She smiles and waves, part hand, part muffin, before weaving her way towards the door.
Starbucks. The Truth Is Out There.
=NYC= The White Room - Greenwich Village - Manhattan
A small, comfortable little place, this: a minuscule cafe of little fame and ridiculously good coffee. The main room is small and rather inordinately comfortable, prevented from being claustrophobic by a theme of whites in the decor and the fact that the regulars - a sundry bunch of academics, artists, lawyers, workpersons, and every other group New York has to offer - are generally quietly occupied with coffee and good, solid plates of food. There is no theme, no specialized and exotic varieties of coffee or tea; the atmosphere is thick with cigarette smoke and comfort, not desperate sophistication.
It's a chilly Saturday midmorning in Greenwich Village. Despite recent bouts of mayhem in the news pertaining to this specific area, the denizens of the Village aren't about to abandon their indie artsy credibility by forsaking coffee in favor of avoiding future mayhem. Thus, the White Room is doing a steady business doling out coffee and muffins. They have orange juice, too, but the Californian on crutches who has just found his way to the front of the line does not order anything with any citrus DNA.
Not long off work herself, and a few basic errands out of the way, Kathryn decides it's definitely time for some coffee and breakfast. She hasn't been to this coffeeshop before (that she recalls anyway) but it looks like her sort of place and heads in anyway. As she takes her place at the end of the shortish line, someone up ahead catches her attention, and she cranks her neck, just waiting for the man on crutches to turn enough so she can see his face. He does look a bit familiar.
Andre does indeed turn around upon ordering. He has a routine with coffeeshops: order, then lean against the side counter until the order is delivered. This maneuver is particularly of use this morning, in that the precise timing of his turn causes him to avoid sneezing on the barista. This is not a titanic germ spewer sneeze, and he's able to release one of his crutches for long enough to cover his nose and mouth, but sneeze it is. Which could also help serve purposes of recognition.
As he turns Kathryn grins as she does recognize the man. "Hey!" She calls a greeting, half side-stepping out of the line so he can better see who's calling at him, waving a gloved hand at him as she does.
Andre sniffs, demoting a napkin to the role of kleenex and dabbing at his nose. Kathryn's shouted greeting reaches him just at this point, and since the one hand is already not occupied with crutch-holding, it waves back. Kleenex in tow. Lovely. "Oh, hey!" he calls back. "You're doing better, too, I see."
"Yeah, still trying to play catch-up from it, but yeah, at least I've returned to the land of 'human'." Kathryn laughs. "You're looking a lot better though." She inches forward as the woman between her and the counter does as well. As she's speaking Kathryn's already pulling off her gloves and rummaging for her wallet in a pocket. Which pocket is the question here.
"The land of /human/? Dunno if I've ever quite qualified for that!" Andre jokes, depositing the kleenex in a conveniently-placed trash can. The hand raises again, and he waves an index finger in a little circle next to his ear. "Good that you are, though." The hand returns to the crutch. "I mean, feeling better."
Kathryn laughs again. "You /know/ what I mean!" She looks again to the menu, then back to Andre. "Okay, so you been here before? What's good here?" She asks.
Andre nods, shifting slightly along the counter as another person slides along it to wait for her own order. "I've been too sick to be silly. Allow me to chuck literal out the window!" He grins, then looks sideways and up toward the menu. "The white chocolate mocha's really good. Fits with their name theme, so I guess they're obligated to have the best one in town."
"Hm. That actually sounds pretty good." Kathryn nods, coming up to the counter next, directing her attention to the barista. "Hi! Yeah, I'll try the white chocolate mocha. One of the small ones. And one of those muffins, the cranberry ones." Kathryn points to illustrate which one she wants. Money exchanges hands, and Kathryn slides over, past the other woman to stand on the opposite side of Andre while she waits. "Funny I've not found this place before, I spend quite a bit of time around here." She comments.
The college student standing next to Andre should be glad that Kathryn has not boxed her in. That would be a major red zone for residual germs otherwise. Andre turns his head away from the menu and toward Kathryn, shifting his grip on the crutches. "I come here a lot. I'm not too picky about my coffee, but here's close and good. And usually pretty quiet."
Kathryn gives a slight sniffle, the tail end of her cold, as she nods, catching the tip of her nose on her coat-sleeve. "I hear ya. I've tried out tons of places, just don't do Starbucks. It's like they're trying to take over the world or something." She quips, though grinning at the same time to show she's merely joking. Well, mostly anyway.
Andre hunches down slightly, brows flattening, corners of his lips twitching. He speaks in a conspiratorial whisper. "Don't let them know we know that. They're setting all the media running around about terrorism to distract us from their aims."
Kathryn leans in closer, not completely able to stifle the laugher that keeps bubbling over despite trying to match his low tone. "Really? You know, that'd make perfect sense. Perfect cover for them." Her eyes dance from the silliness of this all. "I say we form some kind of elite...coffee-snob squad, and banish them back to Seattle or wherever they came from." She nods knowingly at her suggestion.
Considering the persistence of sinus crud clinging to the back of Andre's throat, his voice is a little gravellier than usual when he speaks softer. This adds credibility to the conspiracy-spy-movie potential of the situation. "That's the motive!" he continues, lifting an index finger off one crutch. "They're spreading out to the rest of the world so that when Mt. St. Helens and the Cascadia Subduction Zone go off again and their home base is destroyed, they will still have power!" Geek much?
Kathryn gives him a mock wide-eyed stare. "Whoa. It's just like James Bond! But with coffee! I always thought world domination would come about through aliens or something. But coffee. Devious man. Very devious!" She cracks up again at this, laughing and shaking her head.
"I suspect that's their point exactly!" Andre is able to maintain the straight lines of eyebrows and mouth for about three more seconds before he breaks into a notably congested snicker and adjusts his posture back to something that won't make both his leg and his back hate him.
"So the aliens are in on it too." Kathryn seems to muse this over, rubbing her chin. "I'm tellin' ya man. It all makes sense now." She glances over her shoulder for the status of of her coffee, then grins back at Andre.
The barista is not an alien. There is a tattoo on the side of his neck that could, to the nerdiest of nerds, be taken as borglike, but his speech is inflected with the most New Yorky of accents. He hasn't even been assimilated into The City; he came by it naturally. And it is not with any sort of force to join anything that he announces the presence of two white mochas. If anything, he's too bored to try and assimilate people. But it is not Starbucks, so all is well! Andre crutches his way over to the pickup counter, noting back toward Kathryn, "Seriously. We could make big bucks exposing this."
Kathryn takes her order with a nod and murmured thanks, taking her cup and muffin towards a clear table, slowing up to let Andre keep pace with her. “No kidding. I mean, we could do like one of those news rag spread things. You know, like those ‘Satan’s skull found in an ice-berg’, and ‘Man gives birth to alien baby dog.’. If we can’t get real photos, I’ll Photoshop some.” She takes a cautious sip of her coffee, sticking out the tip of her tongue as it’s still a little too hot yet.
Andre is indeed moving very slowly, despite his increasing practice in balancing a full cup of coffee while hobbling on crutches. It's like a magic trick! He does make it to the table and slide the cup onto it with minimal spillage, though. He lowers himself into a seat and tucks the crutches under it, then leans forward and blows on the coffee, dispersing some of the steam. "Photoshopping's easy enough for those things!"
Kathryn takes a seat as well, nodding around an over-large mouthful of muffin. "Yeah, ish rw.." She pauses, swallowing, then trying to speak again. "Yeah, it really is. I mean, I'm not like some hot shot graphic artist or something, but I play with it."
Andre blows on the coffee again, then lifts it slowly, taking an experimental sip. "I haven't played with it too much, but I blog. You take graphics, I write the text, we're in business!" The coffee is not too hot, and he takes a bigger sip.
"Right on!" Kathryn grins. "Shouldn't be too hard to find a Starbucks logo image of all things." Another mouthful of muffin as she continues to look amused. "And people think I'm strange and have a weird sense of humor. Can you believe that?" She laughs, teasing again.
Andre takes another sip of coffee, his hands cradling the big white cup, protective of the vital caffeine source. "O RLY?" Andre says. He enunciates it exactly how it's spelled on the internet, and then snickers. "I'd bet nobody comments on my blog too much because they all think I'm battier than cave full of guano."
"Mine I just randomly post crap that makes no sense to anyone but me. But it's not really for anyone else to read anyway I guess." Kathryn takes another drink of the coffee, this time it's at a much better temperature. "Seriously though, I like 'weird' people." She made quoty fingers in the air at 'weird' "The normal ones are Boooor-ing." She drags out the word, then grins again. "And I scare 'em."
Andre shrugs lightly. "I never expected to have an audience anyway. It's just more fun to make up obviously fake reasons for why I have no comments." Sip. "And other obviously fake things in general. Nice change from the real news. A good kind of scary."
Kathryn nods. "Yeah, I get that. And I mean, as long as you're not planning on literally knocking people off or something, it's all just fun. You'll have to tell me where it is, I wanna read it now." She adds after a moment.
"Only if I get to read yours, too," Andre notes, grinning. He puts the coffee down by its lonely self on the table, then rummages through his jacket pockets. He eventually comes upon a pen, which he uses to scrawl his website and email address on a paper napkin. He slides this toward Kathryn, then picks up his coffee again. Prrrecious.
Kathryn takes the napkin and looks at it, nodding. "Alright cool!" She tucks it into a pocket of her jacket, then yawns, stifling it with the back of her hand. "Sheeze, excuse me. This graveyard shift is /killing/ me." She admits ruefully. "Guess I should probably go home and sleep, but first." She pulls a pen out of another of her pockets, then scribbles a whole bunch of stuff onto one of the napkins, blog URL, several IM addresses, one e-mail address, phone number. "IM or call or e-mail me or something sometime. Whatever's your thing. We can hang out or watch bad movies or something if you want." She offers, pushing the napkin across the table towards him.
Andre considers the writing on the napkin, then folds it neatly before it and the pen go back into the near black hole that is the pocket of his jacket. He'll find it again eventually! "Bad movies are never a bad idea!" he confirms. "And you can feel free to poke me on the 'net as well. Have a good nap! Don't let the aliens get you in your sleep!"
"Depends. If they're nice aliens, it might be kinda cool!" Kathryn laughs as she gathers up her coffee and the rest of her muffin. "Catch ya around later then!" She smiles and waves, part hand, part muffin, before weaving her way towards the door.
Starbucks. The Truth Is Out There.