BLACK COFFEE BLUES

[defrog]

I’ve always been a night person. But while everyone else would spend their nights at the clubs and bars, you’d be more likely to find me in a coffee house full of beatniks in Hermosa Beach.



[Via Like ... Dreamsville]

Okay, I made that up. I’ve never been to Hermosa Beach, and by the time I discovered night life, coffee houses were way out of fashion.

Still, I never really took to the American bar scene (unless there was a decent band playing that night). I was more at home in all-night diners – which by 1990 in the mid-South meant mainly IHOP, Waffle House or Denny’s. Not exactly a Tom Waits song waiting to happen, but you know, you take what you can get.

Then I moved to Carbondale and discovered the Longbranch Coffeehouse, which worked hard to revive the old coffee-house vibe – not hard in a college town (unless the college town is Clarksville, TN, in which case you’ll get bars and strip joints and you’ll like it), but it was still a great place to get strung out on caffeine until midnight or so, when they kicked you out and you fled either to the Corner Diner or (last resort) Denny’s.

I liked it. I’d have moved in if they’d let me.

So yeah. Coffeehouses and all-night short order joints are my idea of nightlife. Sure, you miss out on fights and wet t-shirt contests. On the other hand, no one ever woke up hungover next to a horrid stranger after a late-night espresso binge. Sure, that’s probably because you never went to sleep in the first place. But you see what I’m saying.

Night owl,

This is dF

Comments

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

Beatniks can do that. :)