A Writer’s Journey

— a recollection of the Novel Cafe —

After promising myself I would never publish a piece about writing, here’s a tribute penned to my favorite writing place (now long defunct). When I find that I’m stuck on a particular essay I might sidebar about the surroundings or how I am feeling. I didn’t ever expect to publish any of that sidebar, but after reminiscing about this inspirational place I thought I should throw something together after all.

After I left my data analysis job in clinical trials, I joined a small company providing CRM database solutions. When I started to squeeze some creativity in between the spaces of this new job, I found myself sitting mostly in lobby spaces. Unfortunately a lobby is the antithesis of a good writing spot. It’s great for people-watching, just lousy for creativity. A great deal of the male spirituality of a lobby pertains to status. Along with the textured terrazzo floors and marbled walls, the plastic nature of a lobby really is a shadow of prestige. It’s there, but it’s not there.

A fancier lobby aspires to status as some folks aspire to fashion, but it is left with just the trappings and the strivings without any actual struggle and substance. When I was writing in my work lobby in Westwood, most of the men carried laptop computers to show their stature, or had bluetooth plugs dangling from their ear.

The mind expansion of watching passersby is fine for a wandering imagination, but the lobby environment still distracts. A better environment has the reverse void perspective: it’s like sitting in a coffeeshop watching the trinkets flow into the walls, not using anything beyond what happens as the flow across molecules of hair and skin and the brain reflecting upon the ethos of a nation.

It’s surrendering to free writing without borders, writing it down to the bones, allowing open toe shoes and polished nails to distract you long enough for a splurge of cologne to remind you that the background music ties together the culture to expectations that span centuries and happen in the nanoseconds when eyeballs first meet.

If you’ve got something specific to write you really have to be in the proper location. And so I began my search; it was the middle 1990s, and after work in West L.A. I walked along Venice Beach. One day I routed myself further towards Santa Monica, along Main street. With my writing briefcase in tow, I browsed a few upscale boutiques, a very busy Starbucks, and then down a couple blocks from there past an equally crowded Coffee Bean.

I trudged along a bit further beyond a yuppie bar, then a couple more upscale boutiques, then a traditional Irish bar. Although Main street continued the shops suddenly transformed to private apartments, professional offices, light industry, and an organic market.

I turned to head back but then noticed that the organic market was housed on the ground floor of an interesting large architectural building, a behemoth yellow brick and limestone tenement with shops on the first floor. The stonework at the top was etched B.P.O.E. As I followed the building down its side on Pier street I noticed that the parking was marked off in diagonally metered spaces, quite unusual for what otherwise would have been just a slightly wider two-lane city street.

I passed a boutique, and then a cafe with bohemian sorts of folks occupying around half of the outside tables in front of large windows. Inside it I peeked: I was overcome with the sight of the place. Its countenance was psychically awash, swimming in artwork hung high on the walls of a two-story interior, the lower half of the walls overflowing with completely jammed bookcases. Old electric fans shuffled stale air above the transoms above the two front doors. Random mixed tables and chairs littered the floorspace, a couple built-in benches and a stand-up short bar provided a bit of a break before approaching the register.

On the back wall a chalkboard menu flaunted a variety of deli fare, coffee drinks, various scribbles and overwashed price adjustments. Next to the register a large half-dome glass display showcased a couple half-served cakes, various muffins, an elaborate macaroni salad, and a tray of several quiche pies.

Over to the right an oversized internal doorway opened to an adjacent room, a continuation stocked with tables, bookshelves, and artwork. I could glimpse some sort of balcony in the other room: the top of the doorway cut off my vision but I clearly spied people’s feet and legs on the second story.

I stood in line behind a gentleman with dreadlocks and a backpack in a tanktop and sandals, smelling heavily of patchouli. He walked away from the counter with his receipt and a large glass of icewater. I ordered an Americano and then peeked into the glass case… a noodlie item caught my eye. “What’s that?” I asked. “Kugle” the cashier said with a smile. I raised my eyebrows. “Okay I’ll have a slice of that too please.” The cashier rang me up and gave me a receipt. The chef came out from the compact kitchen behind the clerk, set a tray on top of the glass case and yelled out “Lasagna!”.

I took my receipt and crossed through the internal doorway to the other section, and dropped my writing briefcase beneath a vacant old wooden table. The clerk yelled out “Americano” so I went back to the counter to pick up my coffee. I glanced around and behind me, sitting over a trashcan was a tray with various sweeteners. I grabbed a packet of Splenda and returned to my table.

As I sat down I absorbed the cafe’s deliberately artsy eclectic vibe. The background music, barely audible, was some sublime World Music, occasional jazz standards, and every once in a while an incidental classical chamber strings oddball. I gradually finished my Americano, used their restroom, and then headed a couple blocks south to the beach to chill out on the grass borderwalk for a while, watching the passing cyclists, skaters, and pedestrians. This, the Novel Cafe, would be where I would choose to write.

A supportive writing location makes you stretch beyond your self-imposed criticisms; writing benefits from the mental feedback of nearby customers, and in most places those customers are too finespun to provide the scaffolding for my pending thoughts about my misbegotten characters. The patrons of the Novel cafe however seemed to live far enough out on the fringe to be inspirational. Plus the place itself had a variety of micro climates, one could sit out on the sidewalk and enjoy a bit of sea breeze, or clamber up the staircase for a musty view of other writers. I decided to visit it weekly.

— * —

The fourth visit to Novel Cafe I noticed there was a boutique hat place a couple of stores down. I had never been in a dedicated hat store before, so I sidetracked over there to check it out. As one should expect from such an establishment, it had just about every sort of hat you could imagine, and several that you couldn’t even. I wasn’t specifically looking for anything, but I spotted a mottled gray and black flat cap that seemed to be calling me out. I tried it on and, what can I say, it made me feel more artistic, appropriately twee. It was forty-five bucks though. I considered it a few moments longer, something I might wear out on a walk, unobtrusive and yet with a touch of English flair. A gentlemen’s cap. I decided I deserved the splurge and went ahead and bought it.

Over the years I’ve found there are only certain times when it is appropriate to wear The Hat, and that when I don it, I am necessarily bound to a code of honor, a constrained existence that requires me to be small, balanced, and a gentleman. It forces fidelity, where my vanity desires wearing the hat, and yet wearing the hat requires my karma to be pristine, to be unblemished. It is the first article of clothing I have ever encountered that actively dictates my behavior. When I fall into a seriously creative and artistic writerly mood, The Hat is de riguer.

So I don The Hat and walk into Novel Cafe, and the serious writers perceive me as a brussel sprout, a sprig of broccoli — I’m not taken with any more than a snit of salt. The serious writers have been working here most of the day banging out their stories, wrestling with their points of view and the minds of their characters. They view my journaling as pond scum, as detritus and windblown radiodecay. And yet.

And yet my soul is in this place too, although from ten years hence, in the indeterminate future. So I flash a little badge that says, hey, hell, I’ve been through authorial salad days too, I know your struggles and isolation. I’m not far from falling back there myself. So then I get cut a little slack, although I still don’t lose their investigative gazes, their peeks and curiosities, as well as their deliberate ignoring my presence. Well, I guess with each project an author has to attain his respect anew. At least amongst his peers.

As I approach the pastry display to order, my eyes lock deeply into the soul of the young babe behind the counter — I pull away my gaze forcefully after ten milliseconds longer than I wanted to be attached. She asks “can I get you anything?” I point to and ask for a muffin, but in my head I say “my heart: return it back.” Hey, fair enough. A second or two later I’m contemplating an equalization prayer that sets things back to normal anyway. Age privilege.

When I get well into my journaling my mind drifts into a different realm of poignant reminiscences. Relationships, women I dated previously, women I dated only once but somehow got derailed, sidetracked, passed with missed intentions. I’m thinking how nice it would be to see Leslie Mead again. Especially if I just ran into her by coincidence, say here at the coffee shop. Yeah, I know, that’ll happen. The odds of her stopping by here would be rather slim to none, but it doesn’t hurt to hope.

Loneliness and longing have always seemed to be integral motivators and muses to my writing. Do I write because I am lonely, or rather am I lonely because I write? Is it repulsive physical or mental aspects of writers that makes us lonely? Or is it just that lovers deliberately avoid us out of fear of being written about? Or perhaps they wish to avoid having their love compete with the love we get from our readers?

— * —

It’s now late autumn, and whooya, the Sunday that is actually the last day of my vacation. I take the bus to Novel Cafe and generally keep a low profile. I’m working on a piece called Sensual, about lust for things other than sex. I’m thinking that there are lots of things that I /could/ do today; instead I will rampage quietly with my writing and then walk all the way down to Venice and back again.

As I’m sitting there pecking away at the keys exercising my soul a bit, just some stretching and experimenting, something snares my peripheral vision and I look up to see a man in shorts — with hairy legs and sandals and an empty plastic cup — he peeks his head into the front door, walks in halfway to stand, and then he turns around to leave again. Fifteen minutes later I spy him in the adjacent room, looking over some random books that he reads for a minute and then returns to the shelf. Ten minutes after that he pops in the front door again, orders a coffee, and leaves. Hmmm….

In the meanwhile a soul sister to my daughter — I overhear her say that people call her Susanna — narrates her entire hippie’s life (a good story although unremarkable in its commonness) and yet the underpinning beneath it rings true. My Parents Were Assholes and I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life yada yada yada. Hey, everybody’s been there and done that but of course the fact that we experience it is also what links us together by the ensuing feelings that inspired us all congruently. The desire to go live our own lives, basically. We’re lost together, we’re found together.

In the cofeeshop the classic rock song Layla plays over the speakers. Her friends leave and then Susanna notices that I can help her with her MacIntosh, and so I do, but the kooky part is not that at all. What’s wacky is that she’s three sheets astray, and while warning me away from the dangers of a young lady at the same time she flashes upon her whole history of ups and downs and noncommitments, thrown in with a variety of flirtations and senses of glamor that I am supposed to, what, put on a scale and weigh?

Anyhow I assist her with her computer, and while Layla and I stay mentally connected it would somehow seem unseemly to take her to bed, and similarly incorrect not to. In the meantime I still work on following the path of my soul to its proper location, while the distractions seem to be mostly from ladies who are foreign for some reason, as if the locale, this shop in Santa Monica, attracts people infatuated with fashion and a “global outlook.”

And of course that was Susanna’s point in the first place: that the reason that I was allowed here at all had to do with my global awareness from my previous work in clinical trials.

— * —

I’m a couple weeks back into my office work routines, and Emily inquires as to what I will be up to after work, partly because she is curious what a middle-aged celibate man does for fun. Well, okay, I’m heading out to write, if you must know. She asks where, and half of me says none of your damn business, but I reveal to her the Starbucks cafe on San Vicente (just because I don’t write there) and the Novel cafe, just because I know that her visiting there is impossible and protected by several hundred layers of psychics.

And then of course, to writing at Novel I go.

— * —

On a summer weekend I drive to my old standby Novel Cafe, parking in the usual place. Destiny I suppose. The weekend crowd should be more mellow, less deadline pressure, a lot of folks just penning by hand. Although the place lacks air conditioning, seats on the ground floor are tolerable as long as you have an iced coffee or an iced tea.

Somewhat curiously the writing crowd is out in force for a Saturday. I don’t mind pinging away too much, but I also managed to get smashed into a back corner of the place without a lot of circulation (although it has one of the better views). Apparently half the crowd was here only for lunch, so the place clears out somewhat; for a quieter afternoon I may cycle back around to put more bones into Sensual.

— * —

I’m 48 in a couple of weeks, and after a respite of a few years I decide to head back to my old haunt of Novel Cafe… I sensed that I was getting too far away from my acrid roots, and so I’m back. I’m also straying toward thinking with the small head. It seems a most peculiar feeling, especially at my age and I’m not used to it at all. I’m not really comfortable or uncomfortable with it, rather just resigned to it as another swerve, a speed bump in the path of my life, and yet I’m still adhering to juggling incidental distractions that I can’t place in any kind of hierarchy.

Some of Novel Cafe is the same, the bannisters, dirty floors, old fans above the transoms, books on shelves. But a lot of the place is entirely different. Okay, maybe thirty percent of the place is entirely different. The traces of my spirit still radiate from the tables and walls. I recognize a couple faces of the old-time writers who are still around. I’m hesitant whether or not to withdraw my former soul deposit though.

It takes me a while to spiral out of my self-pity and take the high road again. It’s mostly just a mental exercise and a recollection that I’ve walked this path before, that I don’t need anyone’s sympathy for my loneliness, and that the whole point of sticking to that vanishing atomic line is for following the path of my soul. It’s not anything more than that, although nowadays maybe the guide-atoms are fewer and further in-between. One passes every couple of days or so, and I align my compass and recalibrate my gyroscopes to its inclination.

After a couple of weeks I’m still not completely settled in to my writing routines here back at Novel, and yet I do manage to corral the same table with the good chair, so that is a start. I suppose that after I’ve been here a couple times a week for a year I’ll be back into the regular crowd. It’s easy to do if you’re actually writing something, yet I’m still writing around, not tackling the four big stories that I have percolating: skate dad, neurotic woman, motorcycle dead guy, virtual glasses.

Then a sensation, a tingling, a knocking muse? No, it is the soul from the dead motorcyclist. It is time for me to write his story: to unstick me he kindles the spark for the missing pieces, he explains the path he traveled and what it means. I open the document in progress and quickly jot down the gist of his story that I will need to expand upon.

I copped out going to Antonio’s wedding today — I was just off to an incredibly slow start, and really needed a whole day to myself without the demands of others (or society). I am wondering if perhaps storytelling is what contributes to writers being antisocial, which in turns cycles back to encourage us in our writing. Hmmm. Plus I’ve got a story now with legs on it. Plus last night that chocolate mousse I had at the Novel cafe that was just deadly. Well, just desserts for a hard-fought story.

After a couple of weeks though I find myself slogging through the mire. The writing gunk is up to my waist, it feels bizarre and unusual, a Friday, a Friday of a new moon, no moon, a moon aligned with the sun. I get an email from a famous local artist who wishes to share links, dumbfounding me, and my latest crush Valerie flirts with me, dumbfounding me, and then Novel Cafe draws me back with its spinning and its barbs and everything that I left here previously from my soul. And I was sanpaku all day, trying to work myself to the point where I could face myself in the mirror with satisfaction. It’s not that work becomes harder as I get older… rather it is that what I qualify as being “work” is something of a higher level than just the regular 9 to 5. So I felt almost all day that I had to get back to my writing.

So then, after a couple of days, my writing hijacked me! I prepared for a usual Tuesday, some work and then some gym, but a note on my pad said to write at Novel Cafe, so here I am. It was a pull as strong as any I had ever felt, almost maniacally spiritual in tone, and as I walk into Santa Monica everything here is different even though the houses and the plants are all the same — a major singularity already passed through, and I am too late to make a difference, there is nothing I can do here to reverse or otherwise mend the area to restore it to its artistic prime. I feel as though I am whistling through the graveyard. Anyway I walk into Novel, order an Americano, and sit down to some intense writing for an hour.

Then I get to a logical break where I could get up and go for a walkabout, but instead I sit, and all the little pebbling of the place exposes itself, as if the artwork has been here waiting to happen for somebody who is just waiting, and it reminds me that the matron of the place (who isn’t here today) serves somewhat that same sort of musing purpose in the same sort of fashion, primarily by just waiting.

Of course, there are those who glom onto the art of the place simply because they have nothing else to do, and so they find it entertaining. An eccentric millionaire catches my eyes in recognition. Ya, peace be with you sir. My issue with those such people however is mostly equity — at least I buy something every hour or so to allow the proprietors to break even. The hangers-on just /take/.

Your extemporaneous writing company though makes a difference. Some places overflow with industry-type screenwriters. Others have folks in casual golf shirts and khakis who write because they think they should, or they are in school, or they are penning their memoir. I don’t know, maybe I’m too judgmental but to me these are all less artistic endeavors. When I’m creating short stories I’m much more at home with the ripped jeans and rumpled old shirts down at the Novel.

I am doing some more meta-work at Novel, even though I purport to be writing. A lot of spin is happening on various levels, some of it legitimate, but most of it hyperwarp to keep the gnomes in abeyance, to allow the future artists to accomplish something here. I am protecting the ennui.

— * —

I return to Novel to kill time and write on a weekend. Hey, how come the rich chicks are hanging out here now? That’s what’s different about the spirit of the place — before it was strictly bohemian, writers and space cadets only. Now there’s a constant trickle of seekers. Ladies wearing jewelry, authentic and fake. Somebody put the word out on the street. Not that it has any long range impact; we diehard artists outlast the best and the worst of anything.

I return mid-week to find a group of three men meeting and scheming. There is no other better way to describe it — they are definitely scheming. If I had a tape recorder and camera handy I suppose that I could work up some criminal conspiracy charges or something. They are talking about ways to get investors, basically looking for the best way to manipulate people and convince them that indeed they have a worthy cause.

The tragic part is that one of the men has his kids present at another table, and his young boy is rapt on every word, in effect learning how to be a sniveling liar, manipulator, and cheat. They are rolling around the tax implications to being called a Foundation, and how they could sell themselves as being a legitimate foundation without actually being one. Another man, doing most of the talking, had his girlfriend at a side table — she is studying something else in a book.

I return the next weekend and sit a couple of tables away from French Girl, and realize that although clearly we beguile one another, she of course views this as a local weekend hangout, and already has her roots down elsewhere in this part of town; it is where she chooses to live and has the culture and environment that she requires. It seems I am forever on the knife-edge of a choice between living a life with a cultured woman on her terms, or living a small life in service to my descendants. Of course, my descendants come first. Of course she remembers this choice from me previously (as I do now too, come to think of it LOL).

A lot of nebulous interference at The Novel today. Not anything that I can place exactly, kind of like all the usual artists sitting in all their usual locations are in some kind of competition, although we aren’t actually, we are all creating in our own little realms, and always have been. But the rivalry is more for a handle on the place, a handle that I established decades ago, and maybe that’s what the concerns might be: the folks want to have their own handles, and feel that I am hogging the place.

Sigh. And do I need it? And do I care? Well, the answer to the first question is a deeply considered Yes, I need it because it grounds my soul as much as the walk around the Boston reservoir did forty years ago. It is enough of me to be a full thirty percent of my soul. It could be different if I was in a relationship, where I could peg my self to the thoughts and desires of another person. But a writer’s relationships is with his readers; this coffeeshop’s patrons are that stand-in.

After a couple months away from writing I think: should I learn French from the gal that I have pined for at Novel Cafe? It’s been a long time since I’ve visited there anyhow — in any case probably time for a weekend visit just for the sake of my soul. When I finally do get back there I settle into my more nominal soul, my more artistic and relaxed self. It occurs to me while stopping by the Novel that the place specifically attracts expatriates.

And yes now obviously, that’s what draws me there too. The expatriates have a different relationship to culture, a wider sense of society, and at the same time a more focused appreciation and sensitivity to the present.

The Starbucks down the street is shimmering entertainment with noisy sparkly music. It attracts those attuned to self-marketing. Novel on the other hand has quiet music and /interesting/ people. These are more intense (as the people down the street are more /beautiful/). Down the street is for people beautiful on the outside. The Novel is the place for people beautiful on the /inside/. The writers down the street are ScreenWriters. Writing here, the L.A. literary fringe.

And then in the proof of oddity, the Hairy Leg Man, the one who /always/ wanders into Novel Cafe with an empty plastic cup looking for water, comes in to look for water and to pilfer what he can from my soul (as he always does) and of course I respond the same regular way, trying to teach him the inequity of “taking.”

Still though, he waits patiently in line, only afterwards to Take Some Ice. Well, does he even leave a tip? Is it wrong for me to expect him to be wise enough to do so?

On the failed attempt to get a seat later at Novel, I once again spy Hairy Leg Man outside, carousing around the soul of the place. I instantly recognize his predicament: he is independently wealthy and hence has nothing to do with his life: nothing motivates him other than filching whatever spirit he can, and since he is too wealthy, he has no concept of the cleansing value of Work.

Aside from Hairy Legs, the crowd at Novel was exceptionally “writerly” today, and remarkably while enveloped in my headset music I seemed quite at home amongst the other writers who were (by their own expressions) equally engrossed.

A scruffy writer with unruly long gray hair (and yet a clean man), types on a computer in the other room. This seems like it could easily be me after a bad spate of unemployment. His pants have holes in them, frayed at the cuffs. He wears glasses that have one arm remaining over a single ear, but they stay precariously balanced on his nose as he quarries away.

He is a die-hard writer obviously beaten down by a difficult life, or else perhaps stuck in a no-win situation where he can’t get a job without a place to live, and can’t get a place to live without a job. But he nurtures his computer, regardless of whatever else he might carry around in his daypack. Yeah, this could be me when I’m sixty, friends.

After writing for a while I recognize and exchange glances with a novice young writerlady (she writes by hand! with a pen in a journal!). Now -I- myself have become a fixture here, less by the nature of my visit frequency but rather my comfortable bonding with the Novel writing experience. I fit in due to the bone-writing of the essays these surroundings mined. Well that plus thirty percent of my soul is still engrained in the walls of the place.

But I love the young writerlady because I see that writers’ future in her as well… if I /am/ still in Los Angeles twenty years from now (and if so, then still no doubt writing at the Novel Cafe) then she will be here too, and this is the realization that we share when we try not to smile at one another. By then however she gravitates to electronic based writing, I’d imagine.

— * —

Apparently the Novel Cafe is opening a branch in Westwood, directly across the street from one of my /already/ favorite writing spots, the Elysee bakery. My oh my. It is too soon though to tell if the new Novel will embody any character. So it’s a dilemma: should I continue to support the old Novel in Santa Monica or concentrate my writing efforts more toward the Westwood neighborhood?

In any case my curiosity gets the best of me, so I wander into the new Westwood branch for an espresso and a looksee. Naturally, it’s not the same. For one thing all the furnishings match cleanly. Plus it’s striving to be more of a sit-down cafe, perhaps a little too focused on turning a profit.

Then one day while in SaMo, I head over to Pier street and am shocked with dismay: the original Novel Cafe has moved. The outside sign is gone, although there is still some sort of cafe there. It’s not nearly the same though, with none of the grit or angst of the old place. A few hard timers still plink away at what remains, trying to jot down their trickling memories of its aura. Very sad. The place seems to be going through a transition of sorts, with the old karma evaporating but just a void, so far, to replace it.

— * —

I return back to the site of the old Novel a couple months later, and am pleased to find it has a tiny bit of its glory returning, although now it’s called 212 Pier and owned by somebody else. All the gooey original karma is still present after all. It may take me fifteen minutes or so to get re-acclimated. Of course this place is the polar opposite of twee, so at the moment that is a bit of an issue. I decide instead of 212 Pier the place should call itself Conspiracy. Plain and to the point. Mostly people spend time here spinning their wheels. It’s good for what it’s good for. It’s lousy for writing out one’s soul. It’s rather heaven though for a meta muse.

The challenge as usual while working here is to use actual words; most of what transpires is well beyond that. It’s swirls and spirals amid clanks and rattles, its flows of power up around away and Eastward. It’s gods cogitating, futures bifurcating, emotions created madeup and real, examined and destroyed.

Somewhat pained that even though the place has my heart, the possibility of meeting a woman matching the other half of my soul is long gone. Given how that always seems to be the situation, I can cope in any case. Decided to head back to the Westside Pico bux with The Hat, as that particular store still stands as one of the more twee among my creative places.

A couple of weekends later, and the big draw today, The Big Thing, is to hit the couple of places I know of high culture. So basically it’s do some bus hopping to UnUrban, a jaunt by the Tea and Coffee over by Cloverfield park, then down to the beach for 212 Pier or Cielo Espresso, and whatever else seems like it is crying for Jeffdom. But the other half of the draw, the thing that makes it soul-work, is a further definition of what constitutes culture in the first place.

Yeah, I know it has to do with the people that populate this neighborhood and their outlook, but I want to delineate it mainly as a method, as a source for written culture, as an exercise in metamuse, and as an instigator for creating more of this flavor of culture in the Valley. I need to purloin (or at least understand) what drives the density of artisans on the Westside and stimulate an increase in that propensity out here.

On the bus to the beach a trio of black kids are making a pointed effort to wave and attract the attention of everybody they can. I want to say to them, hey, you will get more love out of your life if you make the effort to develop your knowledge and talents to be useful to the world, rather than /asking/ explicitly for love. Once I am at the beach I recognize that the young hormone-and-love driven boys were doing the same thing (but in a different fashion) as the buxom ladies parading along the boardwalk. Maybe that is the source of “culture” that I have been looking for. A need to be wanted. Self-manicuring to promote desire.

Is the [self]-art what creates the frisson necessary to muse the chronically deprived artists to boost their productivity? To raise their bar to higher extremes? Is this something I can even import into a different location? In other words do the actions of the local folks drive the spirit of the place, or does a group of characteristics, psychic vectors of a location, attract a class of people? Or even a third choice, an inherent flux of spirituality, that drives both the arousal of the people and the terroir of a location? I can’t say.

Anyhow, after years of admiring funky coffeeshops that are supportive of the arts and crafts of writing, I can at least attest to this. The place needs a permanent artiness, something about its interior that stays classically detailed and timeless. A place needs some consigned artiness, art that reflects the locality and changes with the seasons. It needs a good helping of singular bric-a-brac, junk that adds grit and perspective.

A good writing coffeeshop needs reliable stimulative background music, not too loud or overbearing, but varied. The place has to have a strong natural ambiance, both inside and in the surrounding neighborhood. It needs to attract interesting patrons, folks with character and an artistic demeanor. There should be plenty of stimulating reading lying about, something that makes one wish to flaneur amongst the pages.

Reclaimed, reused, and repurposed furnishings add lots of character. Finally, since most writers can’t sit for hours, the adjacent neighborhood should be pleasantly walkable, with refreshing sights and smells. Yes it’s an awful lot to ask of a place, but the old Santa Monica Novel cafe had it all.

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‹ Richard

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Categories: Artists

Tags: Coffee, Writing