Due to the war, the local public radio station has postponed its pledge drive so that the people can have full access to National Public Radio’s coverage. In between the music and reports throughout the day there are spots during the “underwriting” announcements reminding us that though the pledge drive has been postponed, you may still contribute at the website, wwno.org. One of the voices that doe this is local philanthropist Phyllis Jordan, owner of PJ’s Coffee and Tea.

People may think that if one were to embark on a treatise about the coffee shops and cafes of New Orleans then the Cafe Du Monde would be the centerpiece of the tract. This, however would fail to take into account one characteristic of New Orleans that is either endearing or enraging depending on one’s disposition, the author agrees with the latter. That is, that New Orleans is segregated into a huge network of microcosmic as well as macrocosmic neighborhoods, the borders of which are often not exactly clear. Given that the Cafe Du Monde does not exist in my microcosmic neighborhood, I think I’ll just pass on it as not important enough in keeping with the tradition of neighborly animosity that thrives in this town. Thus, the Cafe Du Monde is to be scoffed at.

There is, of course, the great franchised example of Sartren philosophy, Starbucks. It rears its head in my neighborhood is a sign that no one can escape certain manifestations of the American dream, especially one’s that pop up on every corner. I’m sure that the coffee shop that Sartre sipped his succor was secure in its sense of fashionable superiority. Did owners then feel the need, as so many do today, to take a good thing and duplicate it at every intersection in France? Such a move would ignore the modern law of coolness: it is exclusive, not inclusive, new, not duplicated. The problem is that this law rung contrary to the law of profit. It is because of this that they are cool.

But the main question concerning Starbucks is, does it pass my muster as a good coffee shop? The qualifications, in part, are as follows.

1. Most importantly, it must serve its coffee in ceramic mugs unless the customer specifically asks for it “to go.”

2. It should have places to sit where I don’t feel like I’m on display for every yokel who thinks they want to stare, but am able to see what’s going on myself.

3. It follows from 2 that the people must be interesting to gawk at since it’s the main reason I go anywhere, especially a coffee shop, as I don’t even like coffee that much.

4. I must feel I’m personally superior to everyone else in attendance. Due to great hubris, this is the easiest of all criteria to fill.

Starbucks…the last time I walked in I was actual carrying a go-cup from C&C’s coffee down the street. This was a power play on my part. I almost never attend the C&C’s by my house because it’s basically a hallway with two tables on the inside. This hardly gives room to fulfill requirement 3 or 4. They have seats out on the busy sidewalk, in blatant violation of requirement 2. Because of this fact, they often serve their beverages in go-cups so no one will walk off with the good stuff when they get outside. To top it off, the view from the sidewalk is romantic enough, being on the streetcar line, until you look past to see the closed Burger King across the way. This hardly inspires one to do what needs to be done in a coffee shop, that is, solve the great philosophical quandaries of our time. As for me feeling better than everyone there…well, every place has its good points.

On that particular day the coffee tasted burnt, so I was even more disgruntled. But to bring the cup of a competitor into Starbucks and not order anything was just my way of sticking it to this coffee shop, which is so prevalent that the spellchecker on my computer recognizes it as valid. I’m normally tidy and clean up after myself, but given the nature of my mission, I made sure to leave the cup on the table, face out, still half-full of burnt coffee.

In my experience, getting a ceramic mug is hit or miss at Starbucks, depending on whether the attendant has yet realized that the more go-cups s/he uses, the less dishes there are to be done. I often carry my backpack, which has affixed to it a “Mug Award” pin given to me by a former Starbucks employee-awarded for outstanding service. I display it prominently, trying my best to draw attention to it without actually referring to it with speech. By doing this, I always feel I should get special attention, like I deserve a ceramic mug. After all what good’s a Mug Award if you can’t even get a mug? Then I’m handed a paper cup as if I had just ordered a five-dollar gas station coffee and am sent packing. So much for rule number 1.

The Starbucks on Maple Street is meticulously arranged so that every table is in plain view from the outside. The front of the place is one large crescent window, arranged like a zoo exhibit of existential angst, the setting only simulating the coffee shops that appear in nature. Upon walking in, the first thought that (appears in my head) is usually, “Man! I’m better than all these people,” I arrange my backpack on my shoulder so that my pin faces the maximum amount of people-to drive the point home. Thus Starbucks greatly fulfills regulation 4. Because regulation 4 is fulfilled so (well), the disdainful attitude I take toward the patrons gives requirement 2 some strength at Starbucks. But on the whole Starbucks must fail the test. Even if it fulfilled all the requirements, it is still evil because it is a national, nay worldwide chain and by default is to be shunned.

Therefore half a block away is PJ’s Coffee and Tea. I often hear the proprietress Phyllis Jordan during the public radio drive giving away free gift certificates to those calling in with new pledges. Her philanthropy counts in her favor for public relations, but how do the actual coffee houses measure up? More importantly how does the one located down the street from my house measure up?

When I first moved here PJ’s was the hippest coffee dive within walking distance of my place. Phyllis Jordan was a hero, having given the people what they wanted, a place to go and feel important. But hippness is a commodity that takes a lot of maintenance, without continual care it seizes like a poorly lubricated engine, and is gone. At the beginning of my relationship with PJ’s I was able to go in and get a nice ceramic mug of coffee, no questions asked, and sit in a corner in quiet observation of the patrons (who were of the highest caliber of fashion). The workers were of a bohemian streak, serving the requisite caffeine with a flick of the wrist reserved for an expert, Phyllis Jordan was to be respected.

One of the shift managers working there lived in my building and attended Burning Man yearly to keep up to date on her credentials for being on the in. But such festivals are only as drawing as they are exclusive, and for the past two years I have heard reports about Burning Man on NPR, hardly the cutting edge of the alternative. For it to appear on public radio is a bad as Phyllis Jordan selling(out) her wares for the Public Radio pledge drive. Though Public Radio is leftist,(as any respectable coffee shop would be as well) it is not near enough on the low down for the deep longing, especially in this town, to have a place you can clue people in which is secretive and exclusive. Once again the great modern law of coolness.

The posh shift manager moved on to the Faubourg Marigny, a more artistic neighborhood at the time, and PJ’s was left in the doldrums. The past few times I have walked in I have noticed the associates were of a more fraternity oriented nature. They never give ceramic mugs anymore, and I don’t have any special awards to even try to get clout, more’s the pity. Lately every time you ask to get the drink “for here” they have been replying that they were out of cups. Even more recently they don’t even bother to say that, they just give a knowing smirk and hand you the Styrofoam cup. The go-cups not even being environmentally friendly is a further detraction from the “in the know” reputation of the place.

The last time I went in Rebecca ordered a Chai and specifically asked for it “for here.” “We only have one cup, and it’s chipped.” Said the young man behind the counter as he brushed off his yellow polo shirt. I stepped back in anticipation of what was to come, her strategy had been laid out far in advance.
“Yeah? Let me see the glass.” Her lack of belief and questioning of authority dumbfounded him. Such brashness is usually reserved for the more cutting edge coffee shops that would never deign to hire him as an employee. He hesitantly backed away reaching behind himself to grab the glass.

“See here’s the crack,” he said, pointing to a fictitious hairline fracture over the handle.

“That’s fine, I’ll take it.” She wasn’t going to let him get out of washing the dishes that day. What kind of coffee shop has only one glass? I vowed never to return.

The Rue de la Course replaced PJ’s in its attractiveness to the young and elite in a not so slow and subtle way. It began in the more artsy parts of town, buying crumbling buildings, doing little repair, and opening coffee shops where one felt that just by sitting long enough the muse would strike and intellectual pensiveness would descend from the heavens.

When Kinko’s closed down on Oak Street, the owners of the Rue saw a 19th century bank building waiting for the takeover. They converted it into a half coffee shop half yoga room. How much more in vogue can you get? For much later I the night than the other coffee shops are open, you can see people with their laptops working endlessly on apparently important matters. If one sits in the upstairs smoking section along the edge railing one can get a perfect view of all the intrigue acted out down below, as if from the front center balcony seat at the theater (criteria 2 and 3). They always serve coffee in ceramic mugs unless otherwise asked (criteria 1), and a fair portion of the servers have blue hair. Certainly they are yearly spirited off to some underground festival, the likes of which I have never heard. The amount of posturing, furrowing, puffing, and seeming stoic solitude always makes for interesting observation.

There in only one last thing to worry about. In such a posh atmosphere, can I possibly maintain my sense of overbearing smugness and insolent arrogance? The trick is to use reason like the whore it is, and what a whore: treat it right and it will do anything you ask. Already the Rue is on its way out. This is made evident by the fact that not only has it branched into multiple locations, but it has a location Uptown where I live. How can people who take fashion so seriously, yet who fail to do the proper research be better than me? It seems that if they were so in the know that they would know how to avoid the likes of such an out of touch has been.

This reason ultimately fails however, because it assumes that there are people out there who are better than I am and this does not bode well. I must then proceed to the opposite extreme, which entails not lack of research, but the lack of experience of life so common to the flowering youth that frequent the Rue. Though I feel fifty years old when I walk in the place, my age gives me pause to consider that I have grown through such youthful displays as I see before me. All the tight pants, flashy retro cloths, and up to date technology holds little in the way of comfort to me. I now see much of it as a necessary part of life to be passed through.

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth…there is nothing new under the sun. As I walk into the Rue I stroke my comb-over the way a youth strokes his goatee, the difference being that the goatee is grown by a youth who needs it to show that he is a man, while one earns one’s baldness through true aging, and when a comb-over is brushed it emits nothing but security, and maturity.

Am I better than everyone at the Rue? How can I not be?!

Phillip G.

The loose cannon and the tarot card princess play
razor blade tic-tac-toe on the back of his hand but
their game ends in a backwards draw because
neither understands the rules of attraction.

Sliding through the crowd
she turns out to be more
Thoreauvian-chic than Southern belle
so I stop drinking and turn the other way.

Avenue breezes mix with an air of superiority
as Daisy chokes at the next table and wishes she could turn blue.
Fiery reflections coagulate in the downpour
and a decade disappears in the shiver of a spine.

The minister’s daughter is too hungover
to reflect on her night of passion
or hear the laughter at her own expense
but maybe that’s beneficial.
She supports women’s suffrage
but alcoholism is the main reason.

I laugh as purgation occurs and the banker wins in a landslide.

The Vegetarian Verdict
A Tale of Repentance for the Easter Season

“I mean after all, Jesus was a vegetarian!” My eyebrow raised not slightly at this conjecture, put forth as fact. I was in Carriera, Mississippi sitting at a picnic table with the head of the New Talavan Hare Krishna farm. They are good people who give free meals to the poor and have a “cow rescue” operation on their farm. They buy cows intended for slaughter and let them live their remaining days in comfort, eating the leftovers from the free meals given daily at the Esplanade Temple.

“I’m not so sure of that.” I said in a questioning but nonconfrontational tone.

“Well I don’t know much about it but…” He said dismissively, as if he weren’t just trying to conveniently rewrite history in order to push his agenda. He continued on with his theological points, backing them up with references to such deep and enduring works of philosophy as The Matrix with Keanu Reeves and the movie Contact.

It always shocks me when people say Jesus was a vegetarian. I don’t understand how, in the vegetarian community, this got started. I guess because he used bread at the most important part of the Last Supper, people infer that the twelve didn’t eat the rest of the Passover, which happens to involve consuming a whole lamb–no leftovers allowed. They don’t seem to take into account that the unleavened bread portion would be easier to duplicate on frequent basis because, though they weren’t vegetarians, meat was not quite such a staple then, as it is today in the good ol’ USA.

So I guess I shouldn’t get too mad when I see a billboard promoting vegetarianism with a large picture of Jesus, wherein his halo is replaced by an orange.

God telling Noah that “every creature that is alive shall be yours to eat,” further backs up any Biblical authority that the carnivorous community may wish to level against the vegetarians. There’s also Peter’s psychedelic trip at the house of Simon the tanner in Acts 10. He was hungry, as anyone might be, and had something prepared for himself. While his victuals were simmering, he decided to take a walk on the roof. Why the roof? I would guess he needed some privacy for whatever he might have been smoking up there or maybe he just wanted a good view of the sea. Regardless, he had a vision of all the animals coming down in a tarp. He was told to eat of all the animals, much to his chagrin. He refused, declaring that he was too good to eat any such defiling refuse. Wherein a voice in the vision says, “what God has made clean, you are not to call profane.” Poor Peter was forced to swallow his pride as well as that pork loin he so desperately tried to avoid. For my part I don’t think I would have needed much arm-twisting to eat a sausage. I’m not the biggest meateater, however, as I feel it’s best not to go to extremes when it comes to diet. There are actually many seasons throughout the year during which I generally don’t eat meat.

The other day, I got my invitation to the company picnic, which happens to be at a Zephyrs game, our local minor league baseball team. The e-mail came requesting a head count and I replied, in my unpatriotic demeanor, that I dislike baseball. I added that the only reason I would even think about visiting that game would be for the free beer, hamburgers and hotdogs. But alas, I ended with the fact that it is Lent and I could not partake of such pleasantries. To be in the company of such carnal debauchery would teeter me to temptation as well as an unpleasant temperament. I got my reply from the Human Resources woman informing me that they will have crawfish salad and shrimp there too. My forehead wrinkled like fingers too long in the bath. The wincing of my face accompanied my reply to HR that meat, in my book, accounts for all forms of flesh of any living animal. Her reply was delivered quickly, with no small hint of shock, “What the heck do you eat then?” The final correspondence was to be mine. It consisted of one word. Ash…

Like I said, I’m not one to run from the pork loin, but I’m well aware that people are able to get along without eating meat. That people question such actions is kind of funny. As far as I’m concerned, people can eat whatever they want–just leave me to mine. The shocking point is the overbearing amount of pride on both sides of the issue. Vegetarians are far too judgmental of carnivores and carnivores loathe the presence of vegetarians.

Rebecca and I were walking down Magazine. It was a Sunday morning and we were looking for a place to have breakfast. Not much is usually open on Sunday morning and the only thing we happened upon was Winnie’s. The place looked kinda new and when we walked in, it was obviously a place where those from the Rue de la Course would have no problem fitting in. It was small, dimly lit and decked out with Asian art. An odd look for a breakfast joint, I thought. We walked to the counter and there was a guy in a black knit cap at the register, despite the fact that it was a relatively warm day. One must suffer for fashion. His flavor-saver was so perfectly trimmed into a little square that I had to stare at it for a second or two before shaking myself to my senses and averting my eyes. He must trim it on a very regular basis. His androgynous characteristics gave him the final touch of a bohemian. I developed a quick dislike to this restaurant. Given that it is Lent I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in a restaurant anyway, as it’s better to cook it yourself and burn it properly, to fit the season. But it was Sunday after all, so I allowed myself a break.

I looked over the menu and groaned inwardly at the fact that everything had a side of bacon or ham. I so desired to order just a pile of bacon with grease on the side to dip my bread in, that I clenched the menu in a way that caused it to slightly shake.

“I can’t eat any of this crap,” I scowled to Rebecca.

She was too busy negotiating her order. Rebecca is a vegetarian the whole year round, and has been ever since she moved to Portland and picked up a few nasty habits from the West Coast. She was asking if she could replace the meat in her order with something else. By this time my mind was in deep contemplation. My quandary revolved around eggs. I had told myself at the beginning of Lent that eggs made by themselves, like scrambled or over medium, would be excluded from my diet due to my sacrifice. But egg in something, such as the ingredient in potato pancakes is permissible. I was looking at the “Creole” French toast or freedom toast as it may be called. Actually it had some fancy-shmancy French name which I can’t even pronounce, given that my second language is Spanish. It’s just French toast, and the only reason they label it as Creole or give it the fancy French name is to make it seem as though you’re getting something more than the egg and bread you can make at home. I was therefore debating whether or not the egg actually counted as an ingredient or as a stand-alone serving of egg which would break my fast. My ear caught only small bits of the conversation passing in front of me.

“So are you both straight vegetarians, do you eat fish or…?”

“I eat fish but he’s straight.” I hear the voice of Rebecca say.

It stabbed my heart to be categorized as such. When someone with a flavor-saver like that asks you if you’re a straight vegetarian or if you eat fish he may as well be asking you, “Are you REALLY on the in or just slightly?” The accompanying nod and wink is given much like Peter might have given James, before he ate that bad acid on the tanner’s roof. I wasn’t about to play his reindeer game by using my diet as a fashion statement. I realized I had to act fast and put my temporary vegetarianism in a context so traditional that this lover of newfangled mysticism would be belching mantras for weeks in penance of being fouled by the presence of such an uncouth carnivorous Christian.

“I’m not a vegetarian!” I said with such indignation that a murmur spread through the small dining room as everyone bent to inspect their plates, wondering if they fit the bill.

“You’re not eating meat”, Rebecca said, shocked at my tone of animosity.

“I’m not eating meat for Lent,” I said, to justify my abstinence. I put special stress on “Lent” to drive home not only the temporary nature of my herbivoric tendency, but also to draw attention to the fact that it had nothing to do with any American-Eastern syncretism. I shot a glance at the erudite wanna-be and proclaimed harshly, “One Freedom Toast!” fueling the anti-Franco sentiments of the older patrons sipping their morning coffee in the delight of retired conservatism, not having realized yet that they don’t actually belong in this restaurant reserved for the more posh inhabitants of Magazine. I ate my French toast on the porch reflecting that if I ever come back I’d get extra sausage instead of the side of potatoes I received.

Rebecca and I pulled up to her house Wednesday night and on the overlarge truck in front of us was a bumper sticker that said BEEF . . . REAL FOOD FOR REAL PEOPLE. She fell in love with it and decided that she had to have one for her car. I went on to lay out that it was part of a slowly evolving propaganda war to dehumanize vegetarians. Once they are no longer seen as people by the general populace then they can be rounded up and thrown in camps to be disposed of. I paused to reflect on my judgment of the bohemian cashier and the near riot I caused with the anti-Franco conservatives.

Why do all these groups hate each other so much? Paul’s words in Romans 14 passed through my mind, “One person believes that one may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables. The one who eats must not despise the one who abstains, the one who abstains must not pass judgment on the one who eats; for God has welcomed him.”

I repented my disgust at the bohemian cashier and forgave him the “weakness” of a good sense of fashion. I decided that maybe one order of sausage, not two, would suit me if I happened to cross the threshold of Winnie’s again.

It’s like Paul goes on to say, “I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; still it is unclean for someone who thinks it unclean. If your brother is being hurt by what you eat, your conduct is no longer in accord with love . . .For the kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy spirit.”

Phillip G.