When you are unemployed (ahem), you begin to experience the very real temptation to cut all ties with your community and your peers and to generally wallow in your own isolation and filth. I have toyed with the idea, and while it’s not without a certain hobo charm, I have rejected it. But to stave off this growing insanity, I have found it absolutely necessary to get out of the house frequently. And I have discovered a venue that not only tolerates my joblessness and prolonged loitering, but actually enhances and encourages them. Of course I am referring to the Coffee Shop.
I do love coffee shops, and there are several reasons why. Although, in the literary spirit to which I aspire, it would be nice to wax poetically about their warmth and charm, the thing I love most about them and the reason I started going to them in the first place is that they are fantastic places to see cute girls. Forget the addictive properties of coffee; coffee shops are cute girl magnets, and this must be a huge part of their widespread success. Whether it’s a Starbucks or a quirky neighborhood shop (the one I go to here in Portland is called, get this, “Coffee House.” Zany!), you can almost guarantee that they employ at least two really hot girls. If they somehow don’t, you can at least be assured that a remarkably high percentage of their female patrons will be smokin’ hot.
Obviously, the fact of really cute girls loving coffee shops points to something even more basic and fundamental about their appeal. There is something that attracts cute girls to these places, so talking about what is great about coffee shops should probably seek to find out what that is. But I’m no “coffee shops are great” pioneer; I didn’t invent going to them, and I don’t have any interest in what was so initially popular about them or what it is that draws cute, alternative girls to them. The very fact that they attract the attractive is the most fundamental element of my love for them.
But habitually going to C-shops just for the scenery is akin to dating a girl entirely because she’s hot. The looks are what you’re drawn to, and it’s sexually exciting for a while, but eventually you need something deeper. Luckily, there is much more to enjoy about coffee shops. My second favorite thing about them is wireless internet service. This is wonderful for many reasons, first and foremost among these being access to other people’s music libraries. I can roll into Coffee House, dial up iTunes, and be instantly connected to anyone else who happens to be using iTunes at the same time. This means I can listen to stuff I don’t have, discover new music, and sing silently to myself, all while looking at at least two really hot girls. Fantastic.
Wireless internet is also a great thing for, you know, using the internet. I check my various email accounts something like 40 times a day, but sometimes if I know I am going to the coffee shop, I will restrain myself so that I’ll have a lot of purposeful internetting to do when I get there. For whatever reason (and, again, I don’t care what that might be), using the internet at a coffee shop makes the experience (which I love anyway) more enjoyable.
Girls, musics, and internets are all wonderful and available for immediate consumption at coffee shops, but not everything great about these places is so “trivial” (those quotation marks mean I don’t really think that staring at girls is trvial. And for the record, ladies, I don’t think it’s creepy, either…at least when I do it). For me, and I suspect for a lot of my fellow laptop users, C-shops are a place set aside for work. I visit them to work because at home there is nothing to stop me from putting away that work and playing video games, or doing laundry, or smoking a sweet fatty. I certainly can’t do any of those things at the coffee shop, but beyond that, I also can’t do nothing. To merely be at the shop for any length of time, I’ve got to have some reason to be there or they would eventually ask me to leave. So, not only is the shop free of the distractions of home, and thus much more conducive to accomplishing something, but I also have to be (or at least appear to be) actively working just to be there. It can really keep me on task, thereby allowing me to indulge the fantasy that I am a real writer. And it’s not like coffee shops are free of all distractions (refer to everything else I’ve written about them); it’s just that they are the right kind of distractions.
And you know what? Coffee shops are warm and charming.
