Right From the Hip

In which our Vagabond Overhears a Confession One Saturday morning people are standing in front of the coffee house, speaking of various things, including the partisan nature of current politics, and why their particular causes have not been meeting with success. Sorrow features in these discussions, suggesting that I might offer to such people a handful of my fish and chips, purchased down the street at Foghorn. I could present them as a peace offering, a harbinger of optimism. On […]

In which our Vagabond Seeks a City in Motion. It is early Saturday evening, the doors are open, the coffee house beckons. I enter into a crowd – young and old, in pairs, groups and singles, are standing in line, checking their phones, reviewing the menu board, sitting astride chairs, leaning on counters, stirring their mugs, contemplating their next move, and conversing with animation and verve. After securing a mug of herbal orange blossom tea and plain pound cake (something […]

Coffee House Discourse # 1, in which  a Vagabond Appears. Coffee houses are staging areas for a broad variety of activities, including rants, raves and discourses from the patrons. These spring forth, unbidden, for the benefit of anyone who happens to be sitting nearby drinking an espresso, threads in the tapestry of coffee house background ambience. No revolution was ever launched without at least one heated discussion in a coffee house or its local equivalent. In the spirit of ventilating […]