PeopleWatching

Only one useful thing to report today: I bought plane tickets for my Thanksgiving vacation, during which I'll be visiting my folks and attending my 10-year high school reunion. It should be a thoroughly weird experience. It will also be the first time I've spent Thanksgiving with my family since high school.

I first discovered hanging out at coffee shops while in college at Tulane University in New Orleans. Those shops are decidedly bohemian and laid-back in tone. I especially recommend Borsodi's, although you won't easily find it since it doesn't advertise and doesn't have a sign out front.

Shops in Madison seem to follow the Seattle model: Scrupulously clean, yuppified, and with an air of "national chain" to them. The closest in atmosphere to the New Orleans model is the Cafe Assisi, but they also have the worst actual coffee. The Espresso Royale has the best coffee, and is also best-suited to reading, as it is generally well-lit.

Additional context: This is on State St. in downtown Madison, which means it's right near the University. So the vast majority of the clientele consists of students, and is therefore very middle-to-upper-class.

I've been going there for about five years now, usually on Friday and Saturday evenings, where I've done an awful lot of reading, and also had a lot of fun watching people walk by and interact. (Okay, admittedly many of the people I watch are women.) Over time, I've noticed a number of people who are regulars there, or who are otherwise notable. Some I've talked to, some I haven't. These people include:

1. The Blonde-Haired Guy: He's an employee. I suspect he's also a student, but I'm not sure. He's pretty much the main constant at the shop these days, as he's there nearly every Friday. Actually, his hair seems to be brown, but he has the ends dyed blonde, which is a common stylistic affectation these days, it seems. He's quite friendly, and since I usually order the same thing every week (a double-sized mocha, iced in the summer and hot in the winter) he can pretty much guess it every time. He seems to like to listen to hip-hop music on the shop's CD player, some of which is fairly interesting, but most of which I can live without.

2. The Dark-Eyed Woman: Another employee, she was there all last year every Friday, but pretty much disappeared during the summer (this says "student" to me; how about you?), and now I only see her about once a month. Too bad, as she's very attractive! Last time I saw her it occurred to me that she appeared to be about five-foot-six-inches tall, but she seems to be one of those people who seems shorter than she is. Which is odd since she has a rather forceful, but positive, personality.

3. The Blonde Woman: This woman has been a fixture there as a customer on Friday nights for several years. She's usually reading a book (Serious Literature, from what I can tell), and was gone over this past summer, so I suspect she's a student. She's quite attractive, and dresses like she knows it: I can't remember her ever wearing anything than a tight top, mini-skirt and stockings, and she's usually wearing high heels and - if it's chilly - a black leather coat. Does this strike anyone else as a bit odd? On the other hand, when I've seen her up close, her face (even with the make-up) looks rather older than mine, and I could see her being anywhere from 20 to 40. I wonder if she tans a lot?

4. The Roller-Blade Guy: This is an older man who usually gets around on roller blades, which he often wears into the shop. He spends a lot of his time reading - I think he's a student, too - and will occasionally get up and go outside, I think either to talk to someone or to have a smoke.

5. The Balloon Guy: This is a guy who spends his evenings making balloon animals and clowning around on State St. Occasionally I see him in the cafe, usually playing chess with someone he knows, and making quips.

6. The Radio Guy: This is a rather unkempt guy who doesn't actually come into the shop, but will sometimes wander by and stare into the window. He seems to be in his own world, and I'm not sure he's entirely there. He might be homeless. I occasionally see him bicycling around town. He carries a walkie-talkie with him, for reasons I have not divined.

And, of course, there are many students who show up just to study. There were many such there tonight. The students annoy me a little, because they take the best seats and just stay there for hours and hours. "Best seats" is subjective, of course, but I usually like to sit either in the front by the window, or to the side by the wall. The Dark-Eyed Woman once commented that people seem to feel it's 'safe' by the wall but it's not in the middle of the room, which is about right, I guess.

Certainly there's no High Drama that goes on down there, and I rarely listen in on other peoples' conversations. The street life was more exciting when the store next door was a video arcade; the cops would come down to keep the teenagers in line every so often (teenagers are perceived to be the cause of much trouble on State St.; I think their role is exaggerated, and that they're being used as scapegoats for deeper problems in the city's business district). Now it's a bagel place, so the best entertainment is provided by police and ambulances going by, and wondering what's going on. (Tonight there was actually a fire in an apartment building a block away, which caused a lot of commotion.)

It's a little peculiar to put this all down in writing and realize that I really know basically nothing about any of these people. It seems that any little clue I use to categorize someone as a student, but I could be way off-base for all I know.

Well, maybe one of these people will read this journal entry and send me irate mail about it.

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Michael Rawdon (rawdon@leftfield.org)

hits since 21 October 2000