infobong.com the absurd courts the vulgar

In a spirit of grumpiness, I’d like to point you to an Austinist post with a particularly stupid lede. It starts, “Salons here are like coffee shops in New York. It seems like there’s a cute, hip one on every street corner…” Reading this, I wonder if the author has been to the Big Apple. I frequently relent and get coffee at Starbucks in New York because coffee shops are hard to find and New York coffee is often of dubious quality. Friends who have transplanted to the city that never sleeps often complain about how few coffee shops are there. In contrast, Austin seems to outpace the nation in cute, hip coffeeshops. I have no opinion about salons – I’m a SuperCuts kind of guy – but this seems like a redonkulously silly comparison.

A more legitimate gripe I have with Austinist is how frequently the site updates posts after they’re posted. The site seems to re-edit at a faster rate than most other blogs, but what’s really irritating is how it will update a post about an event after the event has taken place. I don’t want to see last weekend’s “Weekend -IST List” reappear in my reader on Tuesday morning. (Yes, this happens.) I presume some editor found a typo in the stale entry and corrected the problem without realizing it would repost the entry.

I would set my reader to ignore updates, but the site often updates posts with relevant information. For example, the site often gives away concert tickets, and I do want to know if a winner has been found. The blog clearly needs to set an editorial policy about updates. A second set of eyeballs should look at posts before they go live, and contributors should not update event posts after the event has taken place. The second rule, in particular, would keep editors from wasting time and annoying readers.

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Boy howdy, it is so nice to work in coffeeshops that play music I enjoy. I’m at The Green Muse, and I have no idea what they’re playing, but the barista is playing some shoegazey stuff I can’t identify. The previous CD had a shoegazey cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Jesus,” which caught my attention. Usually I want to tune out the music in coffeeshops, even if it’s music I sort of like. I really want to like Epoch, but, whenever I’m there they play folky stuff like Nick Drake. I like Nick Drake, but playing Nick Drake in a coffeeshop is way to cheesy. Music with a lot of space like Drake seems to add to the aural clutter of coffeeshops, while spacey music like shoegaze seems to dampen the sound of conversation and dishes.

I often hear music I like at The Green Muse. A barista named Austin often plays music that seems wildly out of context for a coffeeshop, like The Red Krayola and Add (N) to X. I enjoy these bands, particularly The Red Krayola, and they don’t interfere with my thought, so I do get a little excited to find another fan of the band.^1. I would wonder if music like The Red Krayola’s would turn off customers, but The Green Muse seems to be packed whenever I want to work there, so maybe the lesson to coffeeshop owners is to not underestimate patrons’ taste. And play more droney music.

1. Over the summer, I saw on the Drag City website that an acquaintance of mine from college was working on a documentary on the veteran experimental rock band. In our email conversation, Amy seemed pretty excited about the project and said that Red Krayola fans were really supportive in helping her find archival material for the flick. I can’t wait to see it.

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Since the Austin coffeeshop beat seems to pull in the most readers, I’ll break the news that Little City’s location on the Drag is closing in two weeks, according to the barista. Another tenant is taking over the space in September and plans to operate a counter-service restaurant. The Congress Ave. store will be staying open and the owners plan to keep roasting their own coffee. The roasting operation is currently located at the Guadalupe store (across from the mens room!) and will also be moving to an as-yet undetermined location. After scouting sites on Austin’s east side, the owners are looking north for a roast roost.

While this isn’t as disappointing as the closure of Mojo’s, Little City certainly played an important role in my life. Its location near UT’s College of Communications made it an unofficial office for much of the RTF department. Shoot, I held my official office hours at Little City all last semester. The loss of Little City means there’s only one locally-owned coffeeshop on the Drag, Metro, which leaves me cold. The inimitably funky Spiderhouse is also a short walk from the Communications complex, but in the past year it has made changes like adding a full bar and table service that make it a less than ideal place for working or taking a quick break between classes. Hopefully, the new business will accomodate a similar clientele.

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Epoch, a new coffeeshop owned by former Mojo’s employees, opened Saturday. Unlike Mojo’s, which occupied a grungy house near campus, Epoch is in a shopping center near the “hipster stripmall” on North Loop. It’s vibe is still funky, but more classy, decorated with darkly stained wood pieced into interesting shapes. Decorative elements from Mojo’s have found its way into Epoch. A detourned Starbucks banner hangs in the kitchen, and a metal relief of a coffee cup hangs near the register. The kitchen is pretty big for a coffeeshop; they were serving catered sandwiches, but it looks like they have the capacity for a broad menu.

I visited Epoch on Saturday and today, and the owners seem to be getting the store off the ground. The space has a shortage of tables – they’re waiting for the indoor tables to arrive – and I had difficulty connecting to the WiFi connection. Despite these hiccups early on, I’m happy to see Epoch carry on the spirit that made Mojo’s so great.

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I’m doing some work at The Green Muse, a coffeeshop in South Austin. I ordered a coffee for here and a side of hummus. The pretty young woman at the counter rang it up, and, with tax, it came up to be $4.04. “That will be four-oh-four,” she said.

While fishing through my wallet, I asked, “are all of your prices palindromes?”
She paused to think, smiled, and then said, “Oh yeah! I wish!”
She said that palindromes actually pop up quite a bit at the coffeeshop. “I’ll bet they follow you around, don’t they.”
“Only because I’m insane,” I explained.
“I find that the number fourteen follows me around,” she revealed, “Do any numbers follow you around?”
At this point, I wasn’t sure if she was making silly small talk, or if she genuinely thought numbers follow people. I told her that the number sixteen might follow me.
After asking me about my birthday, she told me she would bring my hummus out to me.

After setting up camp at a seat by the window, the woman came by with my hummus. She told me, “It’s good that you’re insane because sane is good and you want to be in sane, not out sane.”

“If this woman is kidding, she is really funny,” I thought to myself, “if she’s not, she’s pretty darn kooky.” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to laugh or not, so I just smiled and nodded.

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I’m over at Clementine Coffee Bar, a new place that opened a block from my place on the East Side. I waited for its opening with bated breath, and I’m pretty disappointed. One of my biggest problems with the place is that it doesn’t provide enough room for people doing school work or using laptops; on the weekend it’s pretty much useless for doing work.

The temperature is also uncomfortable – as soon as I sit down I want to take off clothing to cool off. I walked in tonight and complained about how hot it is, the dude acted confused, saying “it’s only 74?” My mama always told me to keep the thermostat at 68F to save energy. I guess we’ve got America’s working class over in Iraq so Clementine can keep their shop yuckily warm. Turn off the heat and open a window!

During the day, there’s this barista who insists on trying to flirt with me. She’s cute, but I just want my damn cup of coffee.

The staff plays distractingly bad music: all of the music comes from a satellite radio receiver, ensuring our ears are treated to only the finest in corporate crap.

Finally and worst of all, it seems like the owners are trying to attract a gentrifying crowd. I still miss Sacred Cup and resent the awful El Chile for painting over the awesome “Our Lady of the Working Class” mural near the restroom. Clearly, Clementine is not my kind of place, and I should stop giving them my cash.

Update: I forgot to add that the coffee isn’t very good.

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