Friday, January 20, 2006

Coffee Shop Ramble

Sitting in the Mad City Cafe, the old Columbia stamping ground, the first former Riverside, beneath Salvador Dali exclaiming the lone difference between he and a madman (he is not mad) and the neon Open sign. Two high school girs practice French, sounding American (like I did when I was their age, like I would, could I speak French), a man plugs in the ubiquitous laptop (is any coffee shop scene complete sans laptop? Perhaps that's the last bastion of a forgotten age, the wireless cafe), a cell phone rings. The door swings open, a blast of fresh and bitter January, a man pours unsteeped, steaming tea into a trash can, he did say room for cream. I've read Baltimore's Alternative Weekly (City Paper) cover to cover, waiting for my phone to ring.