#3: on being a regular in a place

take a wild guess where I am writing this from...

The other morning I came into the coffee shop I frequent and by the time I had walked up to the counter, the barista was already pouring my drip coffee for me. “Morning, Chloe!” he said as he pulled out the almond milk, my creamer of choice, and then – “I should have double checked, but I assume you want the usual?”

I did want the usual, and he asked if I was staying warm in the cold weather (no) and if my finals were going well (also no, although it was the last day, hence me writing this instead of working on them). 

(fair warning, this is a bit of a brain dump today)

This, arguably, has become one of the best parts of my last few months: becoming a regular at this coffee shop. I’ve only been a regular at a few places throughout my life, mostly in college (mostly at coffee shops) (actually, exclusively at coffee shops) and, in my opinion, being a coffee shop regular is genuinely one of the greatest experiences life has to offer. I feel like our greatest authors and artists and thinkers were probably regulars at some cafe or another. If that is the case they were probably onto something. For one, greeting your barista by name, asking them questions, just saying hi to someone you know — it’s the best way to start your day. But also, being a regular gives you a place to nest your brain, to comfortably think while existing in the public world, to return to yourself while marinating in the thoughts of others. The best three days of my entire Europe travels this summer were when my sister and I went to the same coffee shop every day and sat there, reading for hours. It’s that feeling of being nestled deep into a place that allows you to nestle deep into yourself. like a little coffee shop nesting doll.

I don’t know what the threshold is between being a familiar customer and a “regular.” Or what the requirements are. Is there a certain number of times you must frequent the place? or must you order the same thing every time? or come at the same time? or be known by name? or every day wear the same thinned out brown sweatpants you bought in Paris and can’t seem to take off because they have become your comfort pants and you’ve convinced yourself you can’t write your best without them? Just hypothetically, I mean. — Regardless, at some point, through some means, I seem to have become a regular.

Besides the fact that I get so much more done here than I would in the cold morning darkness of my room (our heater is out, so doing homework in the morning there means seeing my breath puff out in front of me), I’ve found that I gather a lot here – a lot of world, a lot of thoughts. It’s partially the result of the caffeine, to be totally honest, but there’s also the people-watching, the patterns, the fact that I sit in nearly the same spot every day reading and drawing and observing. I have started to notice things, like the way the seats fill in as the morning draws on, or the other regulars – there are a few of us – and the way almost all of us order the same thing (drip coffee, the cheapest menu item).

I often see the same people every day. There’s a guy, for instance, always in a black sweatshirt, and he sits on the upper seating area like I do and orders a drip like I do. He is always sketching; he brings a big sketchbook and perches there, the entire coffee shop spread out in front of him, and he looks around and draws. He can draw for hours – his sketching stamina is insane. I would like to be him when I’m older. Sometimes if I’m sitting across the room from him I look up to find him looking directly at me; he’s sketching me, so I just lock back in and try to look super aesthetic, which is pretty hard in the sweatpants. Then there’s another man that always comes and reads. He always sits in the same spot, in the opposite corner as me, his back to the staff room. Like the sketching man, he can sit there for hours. The regulars here all seem to have incredible thinking stamina – or a long attention span. I wonder if there’s some connection. I wonder if I also have one. I can sit here for hours but it doesn’t feel like stamina because I never focus on one thing the whole time.

There’s always a postman that comes, in the full getup, and he sits in the seat by the door early in the morning – at exactly six-thirty – and eats a pastry and a coffee. Same thing every time. He only stays for fifteen minutes. There is always at least one man in a business suit. The outfit stays the same but the man inside changes. There is a man that sits in the corner near the shop’s only outlet and works on his computer. A PC. He is the only person that beats me here every morning; he must come right at six when they open. He always waits to order a coffee til 6:30, and he usually gets a cookie to go with it. I’ve made a friend too — one of the regulars and I struck up a conversation the other day and ended up talking for a long, long time. He went to art school in Germany and lived in Europe for a while; now he writes books. He can also read in Latin. We always catch up when we see each other there. It’s wonderful, I’ve learned a lot from him, and it is always something to look forward to.

Then there are the non-regulars — the characters, I guess. While the individuals change every day, the patterns are the same. As an example, there are the dad-bros, as I call them in my head, who constitute probably 75% of the men I see here. They are overwhelmingly middle-aged and white, and overwhelmingly clad in baseball cap, glasses and a sweatshirt (bearing the logo of some local brewing company). They are overwhelmingly involved in a conversation with another man (or two or three) who looks more or less the same. And there are the students. We always have laptops open, and we sit here for four or more hours and do… what? Click around between tabs on our computer for half a day, read stuff, write stuff? What is it we do when we “study”? I don’t know honestly, but we’re all here doing the same thing. 

From my little perch on the upper deck – this is where I always sit –  the coffee shop space spreads below me, and so I can watch the room unfold without being too awkward. I love how it fills with conversation as the morning draws on. Conversation – or, rather, the conglomeration of multiple conversations – is a very specific sound, multi-layered, a low-sounding, dull hum punctuated by musical notes. It seems to have the texture of jam; you can imagine spreading it with a butter knife. It curls over surfaces but holds its form. Sometimes it rises up unexpectedly; often, as one voice gets louder, the rest do too. The laughter of one table merges with the seriousness of the one next to it. Young people talk quickly, excitedly; the two old men next to them have patience, slowness, carefulness with their voices.

There is this website where you can adjust coffee shop sounds to create the ambiance of a cafe. You can get cups clinking, background jazz music, conversations, coffee brewing, rain outside, etc etc. there are little bars to adjust the volume of everything. I think of the sounds in this real-life coffee shop, now, in layers, in levels, all cascading on top of one another and intermingling and breathing with one another. And I imagine I can reach out and adjust the knobs. Turn the jazz up a bit, the clinking of plates up. The crying baby down.

Anyways, the other night my friend hosted an end-of-finals wine night. (it was incredible. She set up a whole two tabletops full of nuts and fruit and chips and popcorn and homemade hummus and cookies.) Someone asked what the biggest thing everyone had learned that term was. I sometimes have a knee-jerk aversion to giving overly sentimental answers to something like this, so at first I said bubblegum (which I did try for the first time this term, to be fair. unsure how I made it to 21 without trying that). But then I amended it: the biggest thing I learned this term was to find a place to be a regular. You find a place to be a regular, you’re automatically equipped with a whole cast of new friends and a space to nest your brain deep into. coffee is nice too. :)

- chlo