Church street cafe

Church Street Cafe used to be a rocking place filled with cool, hip artist types.  Groups played cards and games and did crosswords and puzzles together at tables and the whole place inspiring with exposed brick walls on one side.  The strong black coffee flowed and chattering  and laughter fun.  The music was always good.  Sometimes a song played you had never heard before, and it was new and likable like the boy over there--kind of lanky and tall and skinny--sitting in the leather chair by the window you so wanted to kiss passionately and all consumingly. 


The artwork in Cafe was always by a local artist and exhibitions changed monthly.  The internet was faster then and not dreadfully slow like the one we had at home on Dolores Street or the one we couldn’t afford on Dolores Street after richer Bank of America daytime jobs ended.  


People ate pastries and croissants and salads and sipped coffee and tea and chatted and laughed and read books.  Serious ones stared at laptops and dudes with long hair and peculiar mannerisms and gals that could be boys with skateboards smoked cigarettes outside on the street at small iron tables before a new state law went into effect and stopped that.  Now, no one smokes there anymore since they have to smoke their fags several feet away from a business establishment.


Last night cafe was a different world.  It was dark with dim lights and duller than Dullsville without life save the clerk who made me laugh when he told an unexpected joke.   The few people gathered worked on their laptops and never looked up or your way.  There were no good-looking people to watch and flirt with and snap pictures and the music playing was 1980s pop, “Angel” by Madonna.  

There was artwork by an artist whose name I glanced in the corner when I was doctoring up my coffee with half & half and sugar and cinnamon.


That-the coffee-was still a good taste.  


The internet slower, however, than using your cell phone after all the data has been used up and, using it, was even faster than the one at Cafe’s.


I got nothing done. My upload repeated and eventually timed out.  After three failed attempts I shut down and left for more life in Haight-Ashbury after I bought a bottle of wine.

Oh, congratulations to The Piano Man-Billy Joel-who became father for a third time to another girl.  Joel and wife Alexis Roderick welcomed daughter Remy Anne on Sunday, 22, October, which makes Remy Anne a Scorpio-the cream of the crop-like us...