Café Culture Part Two

A. suggested after my previous post on cafes that I write another one discussing cafes in Berkeley and Toronto. I do have lots to say about the cafes in those places, so this entry will be all about them. I think I had a different favourite cafe every year of my four years in Berkeley. First year it was all about Cafe Strada, partly because it was so close to the dorms and partly because it had good pastries and desserts and a really nice patio, which in Berkeley you could use year round. I have lots of good memories of sitting on their patio first year; I remember particularly one nice evening near the end of the spring semester when N. and I went and she bought us pastries. And I realized happily that we had become good friends. I still kept going there all the other years, but pretty infrequently as I moved to another part of Berkeley and found other places I liked more. Although every year around Thanksgiving I'd go with S. for their pumpkin cheesecake which was amazing. Strada was particularly nice on bright sunny days when the patio was packed and people were in good moods.

Starting second year and going right until the end, I loved and frequently went to the Free Speech Movement Cafe (see picture below) in Moffitt, the undergraduate library. I still studied at Moffitt freshman year but would often stop at Strada on the way to or on the way back from the library so I didn't have as much need for FSM. But that soon changed. It had a good outdoor part, was always busy (although less so on the weekends), and had good chocolate croissants. It also sold bananas and apples, which was smart, because sometimes I really craved fruit. It was the perfect place to go for a break when studying, and I have lots of good memories of the many very good conversations L. and I had there as well.

Second year I started going more often to Cafe Milano which was down the street from Strada. It had a great upstairs area, and really good sandwiches. During the month of June when I was taking a summer course (and the library was annoyingly closed on the weekends!), I would go to Milano for hours to study. I would sit at a table on the upstairs part, occasionally take breaks to go outside and talk on the phone or to order a sandwich, and then come back to my table to continue to make notes upon notes on the history of South Africa. Unfortunately, during the fall of my fourth year, my purse got stolen off the back of my chair on the upstairs part of Milano while I was having coffee with someone, and after that, I never felt the same about Milano, and rarely went there. But I do still fondly remember that June I spent so much time there.

S. first told me about Brewed Awakening, which was on Northside, so fairly far from our Southside dorm, during the spring of our first year because she took a class over near there. I went there a few times with her that spring and discovered that they had really good smoothies. During second year, L. moved to Cloyne, a 5 minute (if even) walk from Brewed Awakening, and we began going there multiple times a week. We had class together from 10-11 in North Gate Hall, 2 mins from Brewed Awakening, and so would often go there after class. This continued throughout the spring semester too. Brewed Awakening had these two great wooden benches outside which were fun to sit on because if you sat there long enough (and usually long enough wasn't really that long at all) you saw someone you knew. But it was the fall 0f 2004 that was the height of my Brewed Awakening infatuation. I was now also living a 3 minute walk from Brewed Awakening and would go there alone, or with L. (and sometimes S.) all the time. L. would always go there in the mornings alone to study and she later told me she'd always see me walking past it on my way to campus in the mornings. I was very happy that fall, with my friendships, with school, with guys, with the Bancroft library, with life (cheesy, but true) and at Brewed Awakening I would talk with L. regularly about all the things going on in my life. Then that semester ended and I bid Berkeley, and all my friends, and Brewed Awakening, goodbye and went to Santiago.

Maybe it was because I missed my cafe in Santiago and didn't really want to betray it by finding a Berkeley replacement (not that it would have been a betrayal), but my senior year of college I didn't go to coffee shops that much (with the exception of FSM) at all. I did occasionally go to Nefeli (across the street and a little bit down from Brewed Awakening). I liked it - it was tiny and so European (looked like it belonged in Rome) and made the best chai latte I've ever had. But I never loved it, or felt totally content there, not like I'd felt at Brewed Awakening. But even though it was just across the street, I couldn't go to Brewed Awakening anymore because all the things it reminded me of were gone. And so it didn't make me happy anymore, just sad. I tried going there as soon as I got back but I missed L. (who was still in Santiago) and I was no longer involved with either B. or S. who had both been important to me (at different times) the year and a half I'd gone to Brewed Awakening nearly every day, and I guess because I'd had so many conversations about them (especially B.) there, Brewed Awakening made me miss them too. And mostly, I think I missed who I had been that fall of 2004. But even though I may have let it down a bit my last year, Brewed Awakening will always be my favourite Berkeley cafe.

As for Toronto, A. is the person I most go for coffee with there and we almost always just go to boring Starbucks because it's conveniently only a few blocks from my house. But my favourite cafes in Toronto are either the (relatively new) cafe (I think it's called B Espresso Bar, they have another one right downtown which I went to once and which is nice) in the newly (2 years ago?) redone Royal Conservatory of Music. N. first took me there and I went back several times afterwards. Its walls are the back of the old building (see picture below) and there's lots of natural light. It's also fun to sit there and people watch (so many cute little kids carrying violin cases). I also really like some of the cafes in Leslieville. Lady Marmalade (I love the name!) is more of a breakfast/lunch place than a "sit here for hours with your coffee place" but I did spend over 2 hours just hanging out there last year with C. when she came to visit and it felt very cafe-life. If I lived closer to Lady Marmalade I'd probably go at least once a week. I also went to Leslieville with N. once and we went to this cool cafe (called Tango Palace Coffee) that reminded me of an old fashioned parlour in someone's home back in the early 1900s, because it was quite dark and there were lots of tables and leather furniture. I miss these places, and will have to go when I'm home over the summer.

Last thing: I am happy to report that I have managed to go to Figaro (here in Montreal) a few times this month, and to another cafe. I haven't been able to go as much as I ideally would like to, but I was at Figaro one night quite late (for me anyway!) and it seemed even cooler late at night. The lights had this cool glow I'd never noticed before and the atmosphere was calmer as there were less people. So I have decided to try to go late-ish one night a week once I'm back in the fall.

Interview with a ...

About a month ago, on a Sunday, I got this great email from J. describing her Sunday morning ritual in Buenos Aires. After getting up and making coffee, J. goes to this bakery around the corner from her place and comes back with a selection of delicious pastries for her roommates and for herself. Then she eats them while reading the New York times and the BBC online. Sounds so relaxing... (Also, on a related note: I am happy to say my Sunday blues ended last December. Ever since January my Sundays have been much better. Probably mostly because I felt (feel) more comfortable/used to things here and I wasn't dreading the beginning of the week the same way I did for most of the fall.) J.'s email read to me like one of my favourite columns in the Sunday New York Times which I discovered about a year and a half ago and have read consistently every Sunday since called "Sunday Routine". The column features a different well-known New Yorker (occasionally they live in other parts of NY state but most usually live in New York City) describing their typical Sunday routine. Here are links to three of my favourite ones: Moby's: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/nyregion/28routine.html; some person I'd never heard of but I like what he said, I think mostly because he sounds different from me, and cool, interesting & fun: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/nyregion/05routine.html?ref=sundayroutine; the last one is Ruth Reichl's - the food writer and former editor of Gourmet http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/nyregion/22routine.html?ref=sundayroutine I especially liked all of these ones because their Sundays sound great, and I like how they work in stories about other people in their lives. I would love to be featured in one of these but my Sundays are usually pretty boring. This whole past year they've mostly consisted of doing homework, going on the internet, sometimes talking on the phone, and sometimes going for a run. Even last year when I wasn't in school, and thus had the potential for more interesting Sundays, I'd usually leave some of my planning for Monday's classes until Sunday and so would spend part of the day working. Hopefully at some point in the future my Sundays will be more fun and interesting, and more worthy of a Sunday routine article.

I think the main reason I like "Sunday Routine" so much is because I love reading about other people's lives. For that same reason, I also really like interviews. I rarely watch talk shows but the few times I've watched Oprah I have been really impressed with her questioning skills. (Obviously not surprising given she is super successful for a reason...) A few years after his infamous couch jumping on her show, Oprah interviewed Tom Cruise at his house in Colorado (see picture below). Although I can't remember any of Oprah's specific questions or Tom Cruise's specific answers, I do remember thinking her line and method of questioning was phenomenal. I hope to be able to emulate her one day, and hopefully getting to interview clients will be a large component of all of my future jobs. I very much enjoyed all the interviews of Chilean exiles I did for my undergrad thesis. I tape recorded all of them, and then I'd get up very early and sit in my little kitchen in my Hilgard apt playing back all the tapes and trying to write my thesis. It was interesting to me to hear myself on those tapes because other than when I asked the questions, I could regularly hear myself saying little things like "yeah", "of course", and "that must have been awful" etc. while my interviewee spoke. I was glad I had done that because it made it seem more like a conversation and less like a formal interview. And also because I think it's important for the interviewer to react to what the person answering the questions is saying.

As much as I love asking questions, I like answering them too. Back when I was 20 and more vain (haha) I used to think it would be really cool to be the star of a Vogue photo shoot. I imagined myself wearing fancy haute couture dresses and lots of make up, kind of like Kate Moss in the pictures below. Now, however, 7 years older and much less vain, I'd choose to be the subject of something like Sunday Routine or interviewed on "This American Life." Here's to hoping that maybe one day my interview wish will come true.