Doing something for the first time right now: posting via my laptop, at an away-from-home wi-fi hotspot. To be specific, I’m at Texpresso Coffee House in Austin, located in Anderson Village Shopping Center, across the parking lot from the Alamo Village Draft House. Texpresso is, by a few hundred yards, the closest coffee shop to my house, and definitely preferable to the Seattle-owned chain just down the street. Texpresso is run by a trio of brothers, at least one of whom used to work at a place called, I think, Giorgio’s on Rodeo Drive, which is where the Texpresso drink was invented; the walls here are decorated with a lot of cheesy photos of the guy, beaming in a monkey suit, standing next to various third-rate celebrities — stars from Charlie’s Angels, LA weathermen, Marilyn Monroe’s helicopter pilot, U.S. presidents from Texas, etc.
Over the years, I’ve noticed a number of distinct segments of the clientele here. There’s an upscale yuppie gym fitness center in this shopping center, so at times the leotarded set are prominent. I’ve noticed that I certain times of day, but only certain times, it’s somewhat of a gay hangout. The larger black-walled room in which I’m sitting now used to be the smoking room before Smoking Prohibition hit Austin, and there used to be a bunch of Vietnamese guys who hung out here puffing away and playing Asian chess (the game known as shogi in Japanese.) I imagine they’ve moved on to less healthy quarters, though.
As I sit here now, two men seated at a table a few yards to my right have two copies of the same book open and are taking turns reading to one another. One is a reading tutor who is helping the other improve his reading. The book they are reading from is one of those Chicken Soup for the Soul books. The story they have just finished reading was set in Bangkok, Thailand, and involved a golden statue of the Buddha that had been covered in clay, I think to protect it from destruction during an invasion by the Burmese. Now they’ve started on a new story; this one has something to do with Westminster Abbey. Those Chicken Soup folks must like churches.
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