Coffee with a Stranger

Intermission #5 - A Stranger Sends Me a T-Shirt in the Mail

2011-03-08T22:38:00.000-08:00

Jason Simon, the brains behind Caffeinated Conversations, sent me one of his t-shirts in the mail. I feel like a caffeinated superhero! Check it out:

Intermission #4 - Buying Wine from a Stranger, or How I Spend My Saturday Nights When Left to My Own Devices

2011-02-15T22:16:00.000-08:00

Picture this. It's Saturday night. I've got the apartment to myself. Nicole's out of town and visiting her parents. Time for some wild shenanigans, right?

Well, if by "wild shenanigans" you mean heading to Safeway to buy some salad mix, goat cheese, and red wine, then you and I should party some time!

So, yeah, I'm ready for some madness. My friendly, neighborhood Safeway is only a few blocks from the apartment, so before you know it I'm inside and quickly finding my goat cheese and salad mix. I'm going to make one hell of a beet salad! Soon all that's left is a stroll down the wine aisle and the choosing of a tasty bottle of red. To be honest, I can't taste the difference between "good" and "mediocre" wine, so I usually make my purchase based on a price tag under $10 and a nifty label. I'm a sucker for a good label. On this particular Saturday night, I land on this guy here:

What can I say? I like the clean label, the word Mambo, and the enthusiastic couple dancing in the top right corner. I'm thinking this wine is going to kick my Saturday-night-beet-salad-party up a notch!

Happy with my items, I head to the checkout. I end up in a long line, but a cashier who's been busy flipping through Glamour at the magazine rack waves me over to another register. After some idle chit chat ("Hey." "Hi, how you doing?" "Good. You?" "Good, good.") and the beeping through of my salad mix and goat cheese, the cashier gets to my bottle of red wine. Immediately, he starts cracking up: "Mambo wine? Really? What the hell is this?"

I don't respond. I'm busy trying to slide my uncooperative Safeway membership card into the little machine. The cashier, however, doesn't really seem to be addressing me. Staring at the bottle in his hand, he's more half-shouting his comments above the general din of the store either to himself or maybe to the Hey Mambo label.

Still working with my scratched up savings card and the debit machine, I almost don't notice what happens next. My cashier actually leaves his register. With my bottle of wine.

"Hey, Billy!" he yells at the much busier cashier at the next register over. "Check out this guy's wine - Mambo wine!" Chuckle, chuckle. Guffaw, guffaw. "Can you believe this shit? Mambo wine!" He then displays the bottle, label out like a sommelier, to the other cashier. "Mambo wine!" At this point, I'm finally realizing that not only is this guy really ragging on my bottle of wine, but he and his other cashier buddy are enjoying Hey Mambo so much that both their lines are starting to back up.

After a few more laughs, some more comments I can't quite hear, and my eventual successful swiping of both my membership and debit cards, my cashier comes back and I think we might finally be able to finish this transaction. But no. He's just come back briefly to look at the screen above his register. "And look at this!" he yells over to his buddy. "It's not even that cheap! Can you believe that Mambo wine ain't even cheap?"

What to do now? I'm unsure of how I should react. My cards are swiped. An unhappy teenager has bagged my salad mix and goat cheese. I'm just waiting on my wine. I feel strangely detached from the whole situation, partially because this guy's talking about me and my wine like I'm not even there and partially because I can't believe he's taken this joke this far. I don't feel offended or upset or mad. Just detached. And maybe a little hungry. I'm also curious, considering Hey Mambo's seven-dollar price tag, what this cashier considers to be a fair price for a bottle of wine.

After some more laughter and the repeated shouting of "Mambo wine!", my cashier returns. Still smiling and staring at the label, he shakes his head in disbelief. "Mambo wine," he says again. "Can you believe it? What is this shit? The Mexican Rambo?"

Seriously. "The Mexican Rambo." That's what he says.

"Here you go, my man," he laughs, at long last addressing me and looking me in the eye. He hands me the bottle. "You have a good night."

I take the bottle and leave the store. I think I even say thanks. And you know what? I did end up having a pretty good night.

Coffee + Stranger #12 - Coffee with Negligence

2011-02-01T18:40:00.000-08:00

I've been negligent.

After five months of radio silence, I've decided that Coffee with a Stranger needs a quick update. Here's what's been happening since August 29th:

1) Despite the lack of writing, I've actually still been meeting with a few strangers. Many apologies to everyone I've met but still haven't written about! I promise I'll crack down and get writing soon, but hopefully the free coffee (and good company?) made the meeting worth your while...

Strangers yet to be written about include a friend of my sister's who proved there's still a whole lotta love for Wayne Gretzky in Canada, an awesome couple from Santa Cruz, and a writer and former professor who just happens to be Stranger #10's partner. You may remember Stranger #10, Bob, for his strong opinions and racy photographs.

2) Denise Sims, image consultant, spotter of northern hands, and Stranger #7, recently popped up in my inbox with the following email:

Hi Mike,

Totally different topic . . .

Are you interested in generating ‘residual’ income?

If so, call me.

There’s something I’ve been doing for 4 months. This month I am making $2500 from it, while having done my own business in the meantime! Wow!!!

I’m impressed.

All the best.
Cheers!

Denise

I decided to pass, but if you're interested, I can get you in touch with her. I might also be meeting with a friend of Denise's some time next week. Stay tuned!

3) Keeping with the theme of past strangers, remember Stranger #9? He was the talkative fellow who I dubbed as "A Man with a PhD in Projects." Well, he was in an independent movie called "The Bigtop" and the director of the film, Devon Reed, recently sent me a free DVD of the movie and a CD of the soundtrack. Thanks, Devon! Maybe I'll write a review once I get a chance to watch it....

4) A photo I took from my trip to the Albany Bulb was picked up by a blog that loves all things Wizard of Oz. Check it out here.

5) Jason Simon, friend of Coffee with a Stranger and the brains behind Caffeinated Conversations, is sending me a free t-shirt! (I get excited by mail. And free stuff.) Jason, a much more prolific blogger than I, is working on a cool project in the Seattle area that involves bringing strangers together over cups of coffee. Check out his site and flickr page to see what he's doing. The t-shirt, which I'll be sure to model for you once it shows up on my doorstep, is another of Jason's ideas to connect people face-to-face instead of from behind their computers. You can learn more about his t-shirts and his project here.

6) Jason also recently sent me a link to a guy in Australia (and another ex-pat Canadian!) with a Coffee-with-a-Stranger-esque project, but his involves tea! Check out One Hundred Cups here.

7) The biggest news of all, however, is that Coffee with a Stranger is moving to another country! I'm temporarily heading back to the homeland, Canada, to work at an organic farm on Vancouver Island. I'll miss sunny California, but I'm excited about this opportunity. I'll likely be covered in dirt and wearing overalls from early April to late October. I'm hoping to continue Coffee with a Stranger in British Columbia, but maybe with some changes - I'm thinking along the lines of a roadside stand and free coffee, but I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading!

Coffee + Stranger #11 - Coffee with the Lovely Lori, the Despicable Ingrid, and the Adventurous Feathers McGraw

2010-08-29T00:49:00.000-07:00

I met Stranger #11 at a Starbucks in North Berkeley near the Berkeley-Albany border. I wandered in more than a few minutes late, worried that she might have come and gone, but found her quietly reading Christopher Moore's You Suck: A Love Story. Although I'm not a fan of perpetuating stereotypes, it made some sense to me that Debi, Stranger #11, was reading a book about vampires. In my simple mind, Goths and vampires often go hand in hand, and Debi had mentioned that she would be easy to find in the coffee shop because "I'll be the one looking most Goth-like."

As simple and reductive as my idea of "Goth" may be, I wouldn't necessarily describe Debi with that label. Sure, Debi may have had some Goth-like elements to her, but that definitely wasn't her be-all, end all. She had dark, straight hair that landed near her shoulders with bangs cut in a straight line above her thin, arching eyebrows. Intricate flower tattoos circled both of her wrists, while a small bat hung from her necklace and skull and crossbones hung from her ears. She laughed at my jokes and at many of her own as well, while she spoke quickly and excitedly no matter what the topic happened to be. She also wore tall boots with an intimidating amount of laces, which she described as her "knee high, black stompy boots." I'd hazard a guess that Debi was in her early-to-mid thirties. Throughout our time together at Starbucks, she peppered our conversation with science fiction and fantasy references, including the Harry Potter books, Highlander, H.P. Lovecraft, and Jennifer Connelly's bedroom in Labyrinth.

All Goth-ness aside, what immediately struck me about Debi were her strong opinions. She often described things with the words really or frickin' followed by a no-doubter adjective - think along the lines of really crappy, frickin' stupid, or really amazing. I realize such a description of someone can seem like a negative, but this wasn't the case with Debi. I actually found her strong opinions on everything from the weather to pop culture to job-hunting to be refreshing. Often, and especially when talking to strangers, people tend to warily straddle a middle ground. Debi, contrarily, was someone who spoke her mind and who clearly articulated what she likes and dislikes.

Take, for example, the movie Tank Girl. Debi is, without a doubt, the biggest fan of Tank Girl that I've ever met. In fact, if you ever need a line-by-line rendition of this comic book inspired, post-apocalyptic road movie starring Lori Petty, Naomi Watts, Malcolm McDowell, and Ice-T (who plays some sort of kangaroo-man hybrid), then you should talk to Debi. She swore that she could recite every line from memory. "I love the scene in the bathroom stall," she told me, hardly able to contain a burst of giggles. "Lori slides under the door and says to Jet Girl, 'I was thinking of leaving this place. It's been swell, but the swelling's gone down. What do you reckon? We go to New York, we see Cats?'" If you're doubting Debi's memory, check out the video below around the 4:04 mark. She nailed it!

Ingrid Newkirk, on the other hand, is on Debi's shit list, possibly with a bold asterisk or a frowny face next to her name. Personally, I had no idea who Debi was talking about when she first mentioned Ingrid (Debi was in the habit of calling celebrities and public figures by their first names - Tom Cruise was Tom, Johnny Depp was Johnny, Tim Burton was Tim, and Ingrid Newkirk was Ingrid), but I have heard about the organization for which she's president - PETA. As someone who was clearly a lover of animals, you'd think that Debi and PETA would have a more harmonious relationship. But no, sir, Debi and Ingrid do not see eye to eye. Looking back, I believe Debi used words such as "hypocrite", "idiot", and "infuriating" to describe the president of PETA. Most of this ill-will seemed to stem from PETA and Ingrid's refusal to protest laws that ban the entire pit bull breed in places like Denver, Colorado and my home province of Ontario, Canada. She was of the opinion that it's ridiculous to ban an entire species of dog, as a dog's temperament is more based on its owner than its nature. Debi also seemed to think that PETA had become too hypocritical. If an animal isn't cute and cuddly, PETA doesn't have much interest. "Cockroaches play an important role," pointed out Debi. "But you don't see PETA backing up their rights or leading an anti-cockroach killing crusade."

To keep track of Debi's strong opinions, I've come up with a rating system based on her love for Tank Girl and her distaste for Ingrid Newkirk. Consider the following images:

On your left, you will note a picture of Lori Petty. Seen here playing the part of Tank Girl in the movie Tank Girl, she is in a surfer/crouch position atop a moving tank. This image will represent Debi's "likes." On your right is an image of Ingrid Newkirk, President of PETA, embracing a rooster. This image will represent Debi's "dislikes." In the following paragraphs, I will highlight some of the topics that Debi and I touched upon during our conversation. The more pictures of Lori Petty you see next to a topic, the higher Debi's opinion of that topic. Conversely, the more Ingrid Newkirk's you see, the lower Debi's opinion. Make sense? I hope so. The Debi-o-Meter (TM), after all, is a fine tuned, super ranking machine.

1) Michael Vick

Debi was definitely not a fan of ex-con, professional NFL footballer, dog fighter, and illegal gambler Michael Vick. "Has Michael Vick ever gone to visit the rehabilitating dogs that he was fighting?" she asked me. Before I could respond, she answered for me: "I don't think so!!!" She also doesn't buy his attempts to improve his image and show contrition. "Michael Vick isn't sorry," she told me. "If Michael Vick was really sorry, he would have donated his entire salary to those rehabilitating dogs."

Coincidentally enough, Debi also pointed out that the rehabilitation center for Michael Vick's dogs is here in Oakland. The organization is called Bad Rap and you can check out their website here.

2) Feathers McGraw

For those of you not in the know, Feathers McGraw is a character in The Wrong Trousers, a British, Academy Award winning, animated film featuring a man named Wallace and a dog named Gromit. Feathers McGraw is the villain in the film. He's a fiendish, thieving, and technically savvy penguin who disguises himself as a chicken by placing a red rubber glove on his head. Debi was endlessly amused by this character, to the point where her everyday purse is actually a backpack in the shape of Feathers McGraw. He goes wherever she goes, including Malaysia, Amsterdam, San Francisco's Pride Parade, and the Starbucks where Debi and I met. I have to say he was impressively well behaved throughout our conversation - he didn't make a peep, he rarely fidgeted, and he looked quite fetching in a studded collar (pictured above, plus styling shades) that Debi had purchased for him. Debi also mentioned that she'd been hunting for a Hawaiian shirt for him for quite some time. "You know how difficult it is to find a Hawaiian shirt that size?" she said. "Even Build-A-Bear didn't have one! They have a grass skirt and a coconut bra, which I've actually considered getting for him, but no Hawaiian shirt!"

What's more, Debi actually has a Facebook page for her Feathers McGraw purse. It features an entire narrative of the places he's visited, the people he's met, and the alcoholic beverages that he's imbibed. Entitled "The Many Adventures of Feathers McGraw," you can check it out here.

3) Debi's Dogs

Debi has two dogs, who are pictured in the above Debi-0-Meter (TM) rating equation. One is a pit bull/mastiff named Milo and the other is a bassett hound named Tank. Tank, of course, was named in honor of Lori Petty and Tank Girl. Despite being a much older dog than Milo, Tank is the more rambunctious of the two. Apparently he often gets what Debi described as "the zoomies," which involves him running around the house like a maniac and making lots of noise. Milo, for his part, isn't that fond of Tank's "zoomies." He's much too wise and calm for that kind of behavior. Well, that and he's scared of hardwood floors and can't really participate.

4) Retail Work

In addition to working for an insurance company, Debi used to work in retail (and, no, that's not Debi pictured above). She absolutely hated it. "Working retail is one of the reasons I have a deep loathing for all mankind," she told me. "Especially women. We're vile, vile people, especially when we're shopping."

5) Fairies/Faeries

When Debi first reached out to arrange a Coffee with a Stranger conversation with me, I noticed that she had an unusual email address. I won't give the full address, but the handle did involve the words "fairy smacker." Once we met, then, I had to ask: what's with the fairy smacking?

"My husband and I used to have a roommate who was obsessed with fairies," she explained. Apparently this roommate incessantly talked about them, insisted on spelling the word the old English "faerie" way, and whenever a pen, a lighter, or some other small object went missing, faeries were inevitably to blame. Debi felt that all of this faerie talk was pretty annoying. Besides, when things go missing, Debi told me she prefers to blame the gnomes.

Long story short, things went downhill pretty quickly living with this faerie-on-the-brain roommate. "We're no longer friends," Debi told me. "She turned out to be really nasty." Consequently, when Debi was racking her mind for an email address, she landed on a little something involving "fairy smacker."

"I just have this image of THWACK! and hitting all those faeries with a fly swatter," she laughed. Debi then took a moment to mime "thwacking" a tiny creature flying around somewhere to right of our table.

6) Gay Men

Debi described herself as "a bit of a fag hag." She even referenced a Margaret Cho standup bit about how ideally a woman should surround herself with beautiful gay men.

"When I was little I turned my Cabbage Patch doll into a girl," she recalled. "I think that was the first sign that I was a fag hag!"

7) Debi's Husband

When Debi mentioned that her husband has a doctorate in Chaos Theory, I was totally impressed. "Yeah, he's a super genius," she said. "He's one step away from being a super villain!" Seeing as everything I know about Chaos Theory I learned from Jurassic Park, I had to make a Jeff Goldblum crack. As it turned out, however, that was an apt comparison. "He's actually kind of like that character," she said. "He's really sarcastic and he's got that dry sense of humor. And he's also kind of like the Sheldon character from the TV show Big Bang Theory."

Even from our short conversation, I could tell Debi had a lot of love and admiration for her husband. "If we go to a gay bar," she said, mentioning a place called Micky's in Hollywood, "the bartender always gives him stronger drinks. That's okay for me, though, because I'm a girl that doesn't like to taste her alcohol. But he gets the strong stuff because he's soooo attractive!"

When I asked what her husband does for a living, Debi told me that he works for a start-up, tech company here in the Bay Area. That's why he and Debi moved up here this past winter from Los Angeles. He used to work for one of the big social networking companies and he's become well respected in the industry for his blunt honesty. He's also not afraid to speak his mind, even if it's an unpopular opinion. Apparently he was even booed while speaking to an audience at a conference for saying things like "Steve Jobs isn't the second coming of Christ" and that "Apple is like the tobacco industry when it comes to advertising."

I think it's a safe bet, then, that Feathers McGraw didn't set up his Facebook account on a Mac.

8) The Expression "You Will Find Yourself"

When Debi first started telling her friends in L.A. that she and her husband were moving up to the Bay Area, she started to repeatedly hear a certain expression. "Everyone seemed to be saying, 'You'll find yourself up there!'" she said to me in a stage whisper. Then in her normal voice: "But I didn't realize I'd lost myself. I must be behind the couch or something."

Although Debi understood that her friends had good intentions, she didn't feel like this was the best way to express those intentions. She did admit, however, that she's having a hard time figuring out what she'd like to do in the grand scheme of things. When I asked her what she pictures herself doing in an ideal world, she wasn't sure. "That's the thing," she said. "That's my problem. I just don't know! I do know that the older I get, the more weirder I get. I want to be more zany in some aspects and I know I don't want to go back to retail or the insurance world."

9) Photography

Debi does know that she's interested in photography. Her husband bought her a fancy new camera, and she's been playing around with it since she moved up to Berkeley in February.

"I've always liked photography," she told me. "I used to do some modeling for friends. Nothing big, just stuff for their portfolios. But since I didn't exactly fit the Size 2 model, I thought why not just do it myself? I've always had these ideas and images floating around my head."

In addition to the many portraits featured on "The Many Adventures of Feathers McGraw" Facebook page, Debi has a website here (now disbanded) where you can check out her photography. For now, her work mainly involves still life, animals, and shots of nature.

And speaking of the adventurous Feathers McGraw, it turned out my meeting with Debi at that particular Starbucks in North Berkeley proved to be fortuitous for the little fella's wardrobe. I received an email from Debi the next day saying the long search for a tiny Hawaiian shirt was finally over!

"I found the shirt for him at Solano Kids," she wrote. "It's a shop across the street from the coffee shop where we met. I thought maybe a newborn or 3 month-old outfit might fit him so I popped in and found it! It's a bit long for him, but I can have my mother shorten it when I go back to L.A. for a visit."

Feathers McGraw, you've never looked so good!

Intermission #3 - Facebook!

2010-08-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

Coffee with a Stranger is now on Facebook! Now you can not only spy on your exes while wasting time at work, but you can also get the latest updates on this here blog. So check it out and give it a "like" if you so please. (I'm needy that way.)

http://www.facebook.com/coffeewithastranger

Also, just so this post isn't solely about Facebook, check this out:

What? You didn't notice my cameo in Toy Story 3? Obviously you weren't paying attention. But don't worry! Now you can create your very own Coffee with a Stranger adventures with my Toy Story 3 action figure! Only $29.99. You can mail your checks to my P.O. Box.

And speaking of Woody, Buzz, and his pals, I know a guy who worked on that movie. I'm famous by association! He's got a hilarious blog, which you can check out here. I like lots of his posts, but I think this one is my favourite.

Last but not least, if you or anyone you know lives in the Bay Area and would like to meet for a FREE cup of coffee and some scintillating conversation, please spread the word or send me an email at coffee.stranger@gmail.com. Thanks and a quick note on store policy - that $29.99 sent to my P.O. Box? Non-refundable.

Coffee + Stranger #10 - Coffee with Your Gestalt

2010-07-31T23:46:00.000-07:00

Coffee with a Stranger isn't a project with a lot of rules. In fact, I'd say that most of the time there's a whole lot of improvisation going on, with maybe one exception: I always meet people at a coffee shop. Makes sense, right? It's a public space, a safe environment, and there's an abundance of coffee and snacks right at our fingertips.

Although simple and easy-to-follow, I actually broke my one rule to meet with Stranger #10. After several emails, some hemming and hawing on his part, and a series of miscommunications that led to me being stood up at a Starbucks near Lake Merritt, I actually met Bob, Stranger #10, at his home. And why did I break my one rule for Bob? Let's just say I had a hunch that he would be an interesting guy to meet, and he didn't let me down. What actually hooked me was Bob's website, or more specifically, the unusual opening animation featured on his website. You can check it out here.

Be warned, however! If you're at work with a puritanical boss lurking near your cubicle or if you're reading this with young children bouncing on your knees, you may want to hold off on exploring Bob's website. Trust me.

Bob, I might add, will likely not be happy with my giving you such a warning. He's not one for tiptoeing around sensitive issues or playing it safe. "America is so fucking politically correct that's it's ridiculous!" he told me.

Armed, by request, with a medium, non-fat latte, I pulled up to Bob's house one sunny, Friday morning. He lived in one of Oakland's older and wealthier neighborhoods, on one of those hills where as you climb, the houses get increasingly large and extravagant. In his small front yard he had a surprisingly green lawn, an immaculate rose garden, and some vines that crept along a railing and up a drain spout. His house was stucco and much larger than I originally thought. As I rang the doorbell, I noticed a statue, about knee high, of a man in a trench coat exposing himself to me. I gave him a little wave.

When the door opened, I was greeted not by Bob, but by two large dogs and a woman who I believe was related to Bob in some way. She led me to the back patio through several rooms packed with paintings, statues, photographs, trinkets, and figurines, many of which portrayed sex, breasts, and male genitalia. On a windowsill in the kitchen, I spotted a small statue of two pigs humping. The house was quietly buzzing with activity, as Bob's relatives, dogs, partner, and two Spanish-speaking housekeepers all went about their morning routine.

When I first sat down and started talking with Bob, he seemed suspicious and guarded. I got the impression that maybe he regretted inviting some guy with a tape recorder and a notebook into his home. We sat at a table shaded by an umbrella, surrounded by patio furniture, plants, and more art. Standing next to the patio door was a life-size statue of what I took to be a naked aboriginal man with a bowl cut. Placed in his hands was one of those rainbow colored dusters, which he wielded like a weapon.

"I photograph unusual people. That's what I do," Bob told me, as he took a few drags from a half-smoked bidi cigarette that had been sitting in an ashtray. He wore an inside out black t-shirt, peach colored shorts, and reddish-brown glasses that took me a moment to get used to - one lens was a square, while the other was a circle. His hair was short, dyed purple, and he had a red and blue yin and yang symbol tattooed to a bald spot on his head. I'd guess he was somewhere in his mid-to-late fifties.

"It's easy to photograph stuff like the Gehry Building or a beautiful sunset," Bob explained. "Helen Keller could take a picture of the Gehry Building - wait, do you know who she was?"

"Sure," I replied, somewhat surprised. "I know Helen Keller." These kinds of questions were a common theme throughout my conversation with Bob. He believed that most people under 30 know nothing about culture and history: "This is not a prejudice," he said. "This is what I get from talking to people. Five years prior to their birth it's a blank thing - they have no sense or idea of culture or history beyond color films and video games."

But back to Helen Keller: "Helen Keller could take a picture of the Gehry Building and it would be beautiful because it's not the photograph, it's the building," said Bob. "Anyone could take a picture of a beautiful sunset because it's not the photographer, it's the sunset."

So no buildings or sunsets for Bob. In fact, he mentioned a trip to Africa where he didn't bother taking pictures of "zebras and elephants and all that safari bullshit stuff." Instead Bob takes pictures of "unusual" people. Even if they look somewhat "normal," he prides himself in digging deeper and finding what truly makes someone tick. "I have a degree in psychology," he said, "and I like to do what I call getting between the psychological legs of my subjects. I really like to get in there. I mean, I'm fascinated by people. And that's one of the reasons why I like your [Coffee with a Stranger] idea, because it's a way of communicating and connecting with people in a way which is really human and that's kind of disappearing because of the internet. I like that."

When I asked Bob to expand on what he meant by "unusual" (and by this point, his initial suspicions of me seemed to have waned), he told me that it was the seemingly "normal" people who actually scare him the most. "Although I photograph unusual people, I understand that people who are unusual looking do that out of a need to be unique," he explained. "So when you see people with Mohawks and tattooed faces and all that, those aren't the scary people. People who are scary are the ones who wear beige or plaid. Those are the ones that people say: 'Oh, he was so quiet. I don't know why he killed his entire family.' The people I take pictures of are basically ordinary people who want to be, and who are desperate to be, unique."

Bob is currently working on a book of photographs that explores feelings of pride. "Pride is like a hydra," he told me, after asking me whether or not I'd ever heard of this mythological beast. "It's one of the seven deadly sins, and people are proud for many different reasons. Pride is really a hydra-esque kind of thing and it runs that entire gamut, from arrogance and egotism to sexual pride, religious pride, and family pride."

Bob showed me the prototype to his book about Pride. Entitled A Puff Piece on the Human Condition of Self-Love, Aggrandizement, Narcissism, and Ego Appreciation, the cover featured a full-frontal pose of a man wearing nothing but a shit-eating grin. He was also, ahem, well-endowed. "When I was living in Palm Springs, this guy came over to my house," Bob explained. "He looked like a gay Ricky Ricardo and he had these giant balls. He's what's called a penis pumper - do you know what that is?" I nodded - I've heard of these penis pumpers before. "Anyway, they use this vacuum machine and I was like, 'Wow. That's quite the set of balls you've got there.' And he's like, 'Well, if you let me, I can come back tomorrow and make them even bigger.' I said, 'No, no, no. That's okay.' So I put him in front of these drapes and took his picture. Ever since, this photo has always affected me as an image of total pride and self-love."

Bob had also been working on a book of photos called Net Men. Basically, this book has lots of photos of men Bob had found on Craigslist, gay chat rooms, and other corners of the World Wide Web. "I was always very direct," said Bob. "I would go into chat rooms, find someone interesting, and write: 'I'm working on a project and I would like to photograph you.' Then they would call me and say something like, 'Are you going to be naked, too?' No. 'Can I jack off in front of your camera?' Yeah, whatever you want. But then I say, 'Who are you. Tell me. What are you? Do you have any interesting fetishes?' I mean, I don't really get off on fetishes, but there's a fetish for everything." Bob picked up the barbecue lighter he'd used to light his cigarette. "I mean, there's even some people in the world who I'm sure get an erection when they see this."

"Net Men is the perfect paradigm for a book," continued Bob, setting the lighter back down on the table. "Because regardless of what they do in front of my camera, that's a portrait of them. If they come over to a stranger's house who found them on a sexual dating site and they only want to wear a suit and tie and sit in front of the camera and do nothing, well, that tells me as much about them as somebody who comes over and does something more interesting."

What's more interesting? "I had one guy come over at 4 in the morning," said Bob. "He came in a pickup truck with three giant suitcases filled with a giant bottle of baby oil, ties, dildos, and all kinds of stuff. He put on a show for me for an hour and a half and made a real mess of my bed because of all that fucking baby oil. That's the same thing, though, as the person who will sit there in a suit and a tie, because it tells me who they are."

Bob spoke most fondly, however, of a series of photographs he'd done of a man named Mark. You can check them out here on his website. "Mark's a friend of mine, probably my best friend, who I met in Palm Springs," Bob told me. "He's bi-polar and he has dementia, so he was on disability and was always available. He was a perfect subject because he's also a photo collector and he's really bright. He's a writer and a psycho, which is to say it was a long time before I would let him walk behind me holding an axe."

The photos of Mark are wide ranging. There are straight up portraits, graphic sex scenes, staged suicides, and the occasional tender moment. Perhaps most memorable and somewhat shocking, however, are the photos of Mark's alter ego, Candy-o. Named after a song by The Cars, Bob described Candy-o as "a really bad gender fuck."

"I'd call up Mark at 4 o'clock in the morning and say, 'Get up, come on over, and we'll go out and take photos of you at the Greyhound bus depot,'" recalled Bob. "One time we were driving through Palm Spring's gay neighborhood where all the hotels are and there was this bad paisley couch, and I mean bad, that someone had thrown out. There were two sections of the couch, one on top of the other, and I had Mark crawl between them as Candy-o. It looked like someone had murdered Candy-o and left him on the street inside this paisley couch. It's called The Death of Candy-o."

Although Bob obviously greatly cared for his friend Mark, I was struck by how much control he seemed to have over his subject. "I always tell Mark he's like a potted plant with a brain," said Bob. "He will do anything I come up with." In fact, Bob was very clear that Mark was not only his ideal subject, but that he seeks men with similar personalities for a lot of his work. For instance, when he posts an ad on Craigslist, he writes that he's seeking "submissive exhibitionists."

"I love photographing submissive men," Bob explained. "You never have to say please. They'll hold a pose forever until you tell them to move, and they get off on that." Here in the East Bay, he's also now working with a friend of Mark's who's manic, bi-polar, and a former alcoholic and drug user.

"Do you ever feel bad working with these guys?" I had to ask. "I mean, if they're manic, bi-polar, former drug users, do you ever feel like you're taking advantage of them?"

Bob was emphatic in his reply: "No. Absolutely not. Because I'm not taking advantage of them. I never take advantage of people. I use people. I believe in using people because everybody uses everybody. Nobody gives anything unless they want something in return. Even Mother Teresa wanted something in return. You just don't go out handing out birth control pills in Calcutta for nothing."

Bob went on to say that his work, and the idea that he could be "taking advantage" of his subjects, was all about perception. "It's the gestalt," he asserted, referring to a school of psychology that led to the coining of the phrase "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

"Gestalt is about perception and organization," Bob continued. "Let's say you see a picture of a man and a woman in a bedroom. She's in the process of either putting on or taking off her clothes. Depending on your gestalt, you either see her getting dressed or getting undressed. Or maybe you've seen those pictures that, if you look at them one way, it's a chalice. But if you look at it in another way, it's two profiles. That's all gestalt."

If I'm following Bob's logic correctly, then, if I look at his work and simply see him taking advantage of someone, I'm only perceiving and focusing on a certain part of his work. I'm not stepping back and seeing the whole, or the greater picture behind his work.

"I'm a very selfish person, okay?" Bob said. "But being selfish is not a bad thing. Just like pride isn't a bad thing, but you can take it to the point where you're arrogant. Selfishness is about taking care of yourself. Okay? You can't take care of anyone else unless you take care of yourself."

I must have looked skeptical, because Bob continued, bringing me into his analogy. "You're selfish," he said, pointing at me. "I mean, you were determined to come here and get me to talk. In order to do that, with me or anyone else, you're willing to do whatever needs to be done, hopefully in a kind way or whatever, to meet them. You need to get people to show up and meet you so you can get what you need from them, which is what's in their head. But you could also turn it around and be doing this project for really horrible reasons. You could be writing terrible things about people. You could be a real asshole. So being selfish is about getting what I need for me, so I can give it back to them."

Then, as if to punctuate his entire argument, Bob looked me straight in the eye and said: "So I don't take advantage of people. They don't give me anything that they're not willing to give me."

Although I'm not sure I agree with Bob entirely, I do see some of the logic behind his argument. I am meeting people over a cup of coffee for selfish reasons - I want to write about them! There's a part of me, too, who wants the people I meet to be a little whacky and who hopes they say some outlandish things. That makes things more interesting, right? But at the same time, I try to be very careful, sometimes maybe even too careful, with how I portray people in these pieces of writing. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, especially since they took the time to meet with a total stranger. I don't want to be an asshole. Sometimes I might even omit something particularly odd that someone says, just because I don't want them to read my blog and think, "Holy shit! Did I really say that to him?"

Food for thought, I guess.

As for Bob and I, we parted ways on good terms. We even managed to fulfill both of our selfish, creative needs - I got Bob to talk to me, and he got to take my picture:

Intermission #2 - Live from the Albany Bulb!

2010-07-20T16:05:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned before, every now and then the blog will take a break from coffee, caffeine, and strangers for a short intermission. Here today, then, I'd like to introduce you to my recent trip to the Albany Bulb! You can read more about the Albany Bulb here and here, but basically it's a strip of coast along the East Bay known for its past life as a dump, a large itinerant and homeless population, legions of dog walkers, views of San Francisco, and impromptu art installations along its many paths. I also have a feeling the Bulb is a popular place for teenagers to drink a little beer, smoke a little pot, or drop a little acid. So, ladies and gentlemen, why not take a gander with me down the Albany Bulb's yellow brick road? If you'd like, click on the images to enlarge.

Slogans were plentiful at the Albany Bulb. Many of them involved f-bombs and incoherence, but I enjoyed this one, mainly because it's true. Science needs to be done!

Lost somewhere within the Bulb is a concrete structure known as The Castle. I'm pretty sure evil hobbits live inside.

Despite my better judgment and that wary, warning voice in the back of my mind, I stepped inside The Castle. I can't be positive, but I believe this is where nightmares are born.

You know what else was weird? Wherever I walked, I felt like someone was watching me....

I found this little guy trapped in the letter N:

Did I mention it was a windy day?

This guy told me about some treasure in a box along the shore. Even though I found the loot, I left the treasure in the box in case you ever visit the Albany Bulb. Be warned, though: something about this guy's eyes seemed a tad suspicious....

Words to the wise: always carry your resume with you. You never know when opportunity might come a-knocking!

Likely because the Albany Bulb is made of garbage and landfill, this tree was sprouting shoes instead of leaves:

This mammoth burger/sandwich was just lying around for the taking, but I'd just eaten breakfast.

And last but not least, I leave you with who I think should be the Albany Bulb's mascot. I'd call him Bulby, but I'm flexible on the name....

Coffee + Stranger #9 - Coffee with a PhD in Projects

2010-07-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

Stranger #9, who I met at Sweet Adeline in Berkeley, is a man of many projects. He even described himself as being somewhat "obsessive compulsive about art projects" to the point where, at times, he's got a little too much going on at once. As a result, I'd like to introduce you to Damian Lanahan-Kalish (he's a-okay with my using his real name), project by project, be they current, defunct, completed, or floating somewhere within the depths of Damian's mind.

1) T-Shirts

There were several things I noticed about Damian's appearance: he was tall, thin, and sporting a moustache-goatee combo. I'd guess he was somewhere in his late 20's or early 30's with a mop of straight, brown hair that swung and parted with the occasional bob and twitch of his head. Like me, he had trouble sitting still - he often swiveled and bounced around in his seat while his hands jumped from one position to the next. His coffee cup, the surface of the table, and the blue plastic wrapper to his New York Times were all thoroughly manhandled throughout our conversation.

But the very first thing I noticed about Damian was actually his t-shirt. It was your run-of-the-mill, plain, baby blue t-shirt, but there was a message in black marker scrawled across its front: "I'm a delicate little flower." Accompanying this message was a simple drawing of a small flower.

I made a mental note of asking Damian to explain this t-shirt to me, but as if reading my mind, he jumped right into an explanation within the first few minutes of our conversation. Apparently for about five straight years, Damian only wore these simple t-shirts, which he designed himself. He had a steady rotation going and all the t-shirts featured, in Damian's words, "self-deprecating or somewhat uncomfortable statements." The picture above features one of Damian's t-shirts and you can see a list of his statements by clicking below.

"I had to stop wearing them all the time," explained Damian when I asked what happened at the five-year mark of his t-shirt project. "I still wear them sometimes, but I got tired of explaining myself. I guess it was sort of a statement on fashion, but as you get older, you just don't want to talk to everyone anymore."

2) Blogging

To keep his many projects and ideas in order, Damian also writes a blog. Originally, the purpose of the blog was to write a post every week concerning a single project idea. Damian admitted that sometimes the projects he writes about never get off the ground, but he enjoys thinking up crazy ideas and imagining what they might look like in actuality. Examples include possibly rewriting the play 12 Angry Men with the entire cast dressed in Batman costumes or creating an animated film that revolves around characters that live in and around a decomposing whale carcass at the bottom of the ocean.

The blog's focus, however, may be changing direction. Damian's thinking of turning it into a forum to promote his friends' creative talents and projects, which brings us to the following:

3) Promoter / Event Organizer

Damian is also a big fan of throwing parties and sharing his friends' talents with the world. "I've been sort of a starving promoter for awhile," he said. "Well, I'm not actually starving, but I'm not making any money at it either."

Among other things, Damian has organized big kid proms and science fairs (see the poster to the left and read more info here), featuring art, bands, fashion, and fun. "The science fairs have been amazing," he said, but he's not going to put on any more proms. "Proms are kind of done now that McSweeney's is doing one in New York."

I have to admit that I'm down with the idea of science fairs. I picture mad scientist costumes, bubbly beakers, unsafe explosions, and overflowing volcanoes. Good times!

4) Cultures of Wonder

Speaking of volcanoes, Damian is also working on a pretty ambitious project that involves "huffing volcanic gas that puts you in a prolonged dream state." And, no, this doesn't involve Damian catching a flight to Iceland and climbing to the top of a smoking volcano with his mouth open. Instead, he and some friends are creating a fake natural history exhibit based upon a fictitious "lost tribe" known as the Thulus. The plan is to create an entire history for these people, including stuff about their mythology, religion, and customs. Although there's a Wiki that gets into the finer details, the Thulus are from an island in the North Atlantic (see the picture on the right) and their entire religion/belief system is, according to Damian, "based around the idea that dreams are of equal importance to waking life." The huffing of volcanic gas, then, is their way of getting all high and spiritual.

"Other artists are working on it," explained Damian, "but I came up with the original idea. Eventually I want to build a diorama showing somebody who's in the dream state and there's someone who tends to them, and they're in the volcanic haze, but they're wearing this old timey diving suit around their head, so they can have fresh air and give the person water."

Whoa. Heady stuff, right? Look for this project, entitled Cultures of Wonder, to open at Oakland's LoBot Gallery sometime in the fall.

5) Acting / Sleepwalkers Theatre

When I asked Damian what he did for a living when he wasn't busy promoting, writing blogs, and dreaming up projects, he replied: "I'm really an actor."

An independent movie actually just premiered in which Damian plays a magician. The movie is called The Bigtop and you can check out a clip in the above video. Damian had never been paid so much to act in a movie, despite that he wasn't exactly sure why he was picked for the part. "I don't sing or dance," he told me, which is strange since he described the film as a circus musical. "In fact, I'm tone deaf and I have no sense of rhythm. I've been in acting school and I've been in bands, so I know I can't sing. I spent the whole of acting school not being able to dance, so I'm not being modest." Even the movie's dance instructor agreed with Damian on this one: "He told me we're going to give you the easiest steps and cut away from you a lot."

Damian didn't tell me much about the plot of the movie (although he did sing me the chorus to one of the songs he performed: "You make me wanna go wiiiiillllllddddd, child!"), but he did give me this interesting tidbit - there's a real life tiger in this movie. I know, I know, that maybe doesn't sound THAT exciting, but Damian described the feline as a "bargain basement tiger with tiger handlers that were not that good."

I don't know about you, but when the DVD is released, I'm heading straight for the tiger bloopers!

But Damian's true love and calling is for his theater group: Sleepwalkers Theatre. He and a good friend founded the group a few years ago in San Francisco and they've been quite successful. When I asked Damian to tell me about an unusual role he took on for Sleepwalkers, he mentioned once playing the role of a "competitive eater." The role involved stuffing down actual spaghetti and hot dogs while on-stage.

"We're really trying to do theater for people who don't go to theater," he said. "It's theater with a lower case 't' and we try to keep it accessible for people who normally go see movies."

Their most successful play thus far was Zombie Town, which Damian described as a "documentary theater piece on zombies." Next up is the first play in an ambitious trilogy about the end of the world. When I mentioned that that sounded pretty cool because I love me some post-apocalyptical, Damian responded: "Yeah, everyone does. That's what we're banking on - everyone loves the apocalypse!"

6) Islamic Studies

To add to this brimming, melting pot of projects and ideas, Damian also has a brand spanking new interest. "I just took a class on Islam and I think I want to study Comparative Religion," he said. "So now I'm really into the Islamic world."

He's also hoping to visit Turkey sometime in the future: "I'm really interested in Turkey as a new power in the world." Second on his list of countries to visit? The in-the-same-region, but not-so-Islamic country of Greece. And why Greece? In addition to having a childhood obsession with all things Greek (including Alexander the Great), Damian looks fondly upon his days living in Queens, NY in a predominantly Greek neighborhood. "I ate Greek food every day and it's the best food on earth!" he said. Unfortunately, every time he mentions potentially visiting Greece to his girlfriend, she reminds him: "You know it's really expensive there."

Looks like we know who the voice of reason is in this relationship!

7) Nipple Hunter

During a lull in our conversation, Damian announced to me: "I used to call myself a nipple hunter."

I'll let your imagination run wild for a moment. I hope you come up with something strange and scandalous!

The truth of the matter? Damian used to work for a social networking site called Piczo. Apparently the site caters primarily to a teenage audience in the United Kingdom, and it was Damian's job to search people's pages and profiles for naughty photos, nasty cyber bullying, and other assorted tomfoolery. If Damian found a picture with an exposed nipple, for example, he'd delete the photo or even the offender's entire profile.

And, voila, nipple hunter!

8) Miscellaneous

I could go on. We're really only scratching the surface of Damian's many projects and exploits. I could write, for instance, about his food blog, his book of poetry, his rock and roll ambitions, or his brief foray into the world of online music reviews, but I'm hoping I've given you a tantalizing glimpse into Damian's wacky brain. I'm impressed by how much he's got going on - maybe he deserves an honorary PhD in Projects?

To wrap things up, I'll leave you with one last snippet from our conversation. I'm not exactly sure how we stumbled upon Maxim magazine as a topic of conversation, but considering we also spent a significant amount of time talking about Dennis Hopper, I can't say it was surprising:

"Maxim is the most disgusting magazine. It really is amazing," said Damian. "It's so misogynistic. It's all about how to lie to your girlfriend to get her to do things she doesn't want to do in bed. For a while, this is so weird, I was getting Maxim, for no reason, and OUT magazine. So I was convinced people thought I was a super in the closet jock because both magazines were out on my coffee table."

Coffee + Stranger #8 - Coffee with GWAGSO, Nico the Dog, and Choosing a Path

2010-06-26T21:35:00.000-07:00

Stranger #8, who I met at Cafe Fanny in North Berkeley, specifically asked me not to refer to her as "Tanya: The Girl Who Almost Got Shit On."

So I'm not going to do it. Nope. Referring to someone as "Tanya: The Girl Who Almost Got Shit On" (or GWAGSO for short) would not only be unprofessional and ungentlemanly, but also fit only for the playground of an elementary school or as the working title for a Will Ferrell movie.

Coffee with a Stranger, after all, is a project known first and foremost for its class and integrity.

(Sorry, Tanya, but really, how could I resist?)

And speaking of class and integrity, check out this guy!

Meet Nico. He accompanied Tanya to Cafe Fanny. Although he resisted my attempts to pat him due to an unsolved case of shyness, he garnered quite a bit of attention. Not only did one of Cafe Fanny's employees come outside specifically to meet him, but a woman with what seemed like a German accent approached Tanya to see if it was okay to take some up close and personal glamour shots of him. The lens of her camera, I swear, was the size of my face.

Despite his shyness, Nico took all this attention in stride. He seemed to grin and bear it. According to Tanya, his baby blue eyes and "somewhat unusual appearance" have led to a certain accepted degree of hounding by paparazzi and admirers. Tied to our table while we shared iced tea (Tanya) and coffee (me), Nico (shame on me - I forgot to offer him a drink!) spent most of his time mingling quietly with Tanya's legs. The one exception, however, was the passing by of a tumbleweed of a Pomeranian - Nico almost overturned the table to greet him.

Nico goes everywhere with Tanya - parks, coffee shops, Berkeley, San Francisco, Los Angeles (Tanya's hometown), DC, Pennsylvania, France, Cote D'Ivoire, the list goes on and on. He'll even be heading to Brazil with her in the not so distant future.

Cote D'Ivoire, by the by, is where Tanya almost got pooped on. By primates. Fortunately, Nico stayed home for this one and was spared the near pooping upon experience. In case you were wondering, the situation went down like this:

Early one morning, Tanya and a guide set out to investigate a German NGO that was busy protecting and researching chimpanzees in Cote D'Ivoire's Tai Forest. According to Tanya, monkey poachers are a big problem in Cote D'Ivoire. Why? "Lots of people like monkey," she said. "They've developed a taste for it." Eventually, Tanya and her guide met up with the German NGO researchers. They decided to go check out the chimps in their treetop nests, where they were sleeping. What happened next, I think is best described in Tanya's own words: "When chimps wake up, they're really noisy and they throw leaves and stuff. Or at least I thought it was leaves. There I was, standing closer to the tree than everyone else because I want to see where they are, and the German researcher was saying, 'You better stand back.' And I was like, 'Why? I want to see the chimps.' 'Because you're going to get shit on if you don't move back.' So I was like, 'Okay, I'm moving, I'm moving' and then there's a big rain of pee and all kinds of things."

Gross. I forgot to ask, but I bet that smelled terrible.

Overall, Tanya didn't seem that enamored with chimpanzees. Don't get me wrong - she was impressed with the work that the NGO was doing, but chimpanzees? Maybe not for Tanya. "They're bigger than you think and they're really kind of high strung," she said. "They'll be sitting around picking their nose or something, and then the next minute they're [she paused here to make some crazy, intimidating monkey noises] and I'm like, okay, I'm going to die! They get really rowdy, they start swinging from trees, and they're making all this noise - it's actually kind of scary because you realize they could just come and crack you in half and go along their merry way."

Damn. Hollywood monkeys have totally led me astray when it comes to true chimpanzee nature.

The next logical question, of course, is why Tanya was kicking around in a Cote D'Ivoire forest checking out pooping monkeys. She was, in fact, representing the government of the United States of America. She was sent into the forest to see if this chimp saving NGO was something that the US government would be interested in funding.

From what I could tell, this foray into the forest wasn't a normal part of Tanya's job description, although it appeared to be a fun diversion from the everyday. Tanya's job is being a Foreign Service Officer for the US State Department. Essentially, she's part of the government's diplomatic arm at US embassies overseas. Her specialty is Public Affairs, which I believe involves a lot of talking with people and solving their problems. Cote D'Ivoire was her first official gig with the Foreign Service, although Tanya's been afflicted with the travel bug ever since she took a non-government job in Mongolia in 2002. After a few years in California's wine industry, she decided to blow things up and try her hand as a volunteer coordinator for an organization that was rebuilding a Buddhist temple in Mongolia. "Working in Mongolia was such a good experience," she said. "I thought, shit, if I can do this, I can do anything! I don't need fancy hotels, I don't need room service, and it's amazing how when you strip everything away, how little you really need." Next up she and Nico are headed to Brazil for a three year stint at the US embassy in Rio de Janeiro.

Working as a Foreign Service Officer is essentially Tanya's dream job. "It's a confluence of everything I like, which is travel, meeting new people, and doing something with variety. There's always something that's interesting and you're always learning."

This isn't to say, however, that the job doesn't come without its drawbacks. "The disadvantages are that you miss things," said Tanya. "People's birthdays, graduations, weddings, anniversaries. You miss those things that are important, those rights of passage and traditions. You're not there. Sometimes, too, people forget about you because you're gone."

Although I only had this short conversation with Tanya, I feel like it's this last issue that's understandably a bit of a conflict for her. At times, I felt like she was trying to justify her career path, like she was voicing an argument to me that had been rattling around in her mind for quite some time. "The good thing about the job," she said, "is that you get really used to change, which is what life is all about anyways." When I asked if this was a motto or a creed that she lived by, Tanya responded: "It works for me. It's not for everyone. It's hard because you constantly have to reinvent your life every two or so years. You meet new friends, leave friends, or they leave you, which is awful. And you're constantly starting from zero with people that you meet. After awhile, I think it would get old. So I don't know."

On the flip side, Tanya mentioned that she wasn't sure she could live a more "normal" or sedentary life. "I'm not even sure I could sit and do that [live the comfortable, stay-in-one-place life] anymore," she said. "The problem, too, with the kind of life I'm living now is that you get constant stimulation and you get a little addicted. Your landscape is always changing, the people are always changing, you're constantly trying to adapt to something and it's challenging and it's interesting, and then when you get to a place and you have to sit still, you're kind of like, well, what do I do now?"

I can understand both sides of Tanya's argument here. Both stability and constant adventure can be mighty tempting or an easy rut in which to fall. Perhaps the answer is simply to choose one and not look back? Or is there that happy, elusive medium? Or maybe Tanya puts it best with the following, which were her last words before the tape on my recorder came to an end:

"My life is interesting enough that I don't feel like I'm missing out."

Coffee + Stranger #7 - Coffee with Northern Hands and Consulting Your Image

2010-06-05T22:13:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that the word nude sounds a bit like the word new? Personally, I hadn't given it much thought until my conversation with Stranger #7, Denise Sims, at Blue Dot Cafe in Alameda, CA. Within the first five minutes of sitting down with Denise, I mentioned that a lot of the strangers I've met happened to be "new to San Francisco's Bay Area." Denise gave me an odd look, but obliviously I nattered on until suddenly she interrupted me: "Ohhhh, you said new to the Bay Area! Sorry, I thought you said nude."

Wouldn't that be something? I bet Coffee with a Nude Stranger would probably get a few more hits on the old interwebs. It might be difficult, though, to find a coffee shop that would allow such a project within its walls. Unless, of course, I moved to Vassalboro, Maine and hung out at its Grand View Topless Coffee Shop. Not a bad idea, I guess, although I could do without the controversy and, I'm not joking here, ARSON.

Initial miscommunication aside, Denise and I had a lovely chat. I think we ended up talking for more than an hour. Native to the Bay Area and a mother of two teenagers, Denise described herself as someone who's "pretty good at personality profiles and picking up on visual cues that tell me a lot about a person." When I mentioned early in our conversation that I'm originally from Canada, she remarked that that made sense. "Yes," she said. "I would have guessed that direction."

Surprised by this comment, I responded, "Wow. That's almost intimidating, like you're looking into my soul as we speak."

Denise and I had a good laugh about that. My soul, however, remained weary and suspicious. What other deep, dark secrets could Denise be gleaning from my appearance? Curious, I pressed her to tell me more about my northern visual cues. Was it my accent? My unibrow? My ratty brown shoes with tattered laces, which are pictured on the right?

Denise told me that she did pick up on an accent, but it was more my "demeanor and disposition" that hinted at my homeland. Furthermore, my "color, bone structure, body type, and hands are more typically from that area."

My hands? Who knew? Looking at my hands now, they reveal, well, nothing to my untrained eye. All I see are blisters, bony pokers, and some unusual angles around my knuckles. What am I missing?

Denise, for her part, wasn't going to reveal any trade secrets. When I asked her to elaborate some more on what was particularly Canadian or northernly about me, she responded: "That's a hard question. I don't think I can answer it because it deals with this whole body of knowledge I have and it would be, like, an hour and a half answer. It's very detailed in a way that's not very interesting."

Fair enough.

Which brings me to Denise's line of work. Considering how she described herself above, what would you think she does for a living? Gumshoe? Psychic? Therapist? Well, in a weird kind of way, she's kind of all three wrapped into one. When talking about her work and her clients, Denise had the following to say: "People say, you know, God this is the best thing. It's better than my shrink, it's better than astrology, this is so cool, and I get clothes at the end!"

Seeing as your conventional gumshoe, psychic, and psychiatrist won't give you clothes when they're done working with you, we can confidently strike those off the list of possibilities. Denise, in actuality, is an image consultant. In fact, she has over 30 years of experience "working with thousands and thousands of people, very intimately, sitting in closets and fitting rooms while clients are in their underwear, finding a look that will make them feel great about themselves!" Simply put, you hire Denise to change or update your look and your wardrobe. She even has a spiffy, new website for her business, which you can take a look at here.

I was pretty blown away by the idea of Denise's profession. I guess I've always known that such a job existed, but I'd never given much thought to how it might actually work. What, for example, is the state of mind of people who seek an image consultant? Not to pigeonhole or stereotype, but I picture people who just got divorced or broke up with a significant other and now want to get all sexied up. What better way is there to show an ex that you're TOTALLY over them then by hitting the town with a snazzy new look?

Obviously, I'm over-generalizing and over-simplifying here. Denise did, however, have this to say: "The key to many of my client's visits is some sort of life pivot." She does get a lot of men and women who are recently divorced (see? I'm kind of right!), but there's also lots of people who are facing other big, transformational life experiences. Examples include losing a bunch of weight, taking on a new job that requires a more professional or edgy look, shaking things up because you've moved to a new (not nude) town, or simply because you wake up one day and realize, hey, my clothes are looking a little dated.

Personally, I can see myself falling into this last category somewhere down the line. I hate shopping and if it weren't for kindly (or maybe embarrassed?) girlfriends who took me shopping and friends (and occasionally strangers) who mocked me, I'd still be wearing ties for belts, moccasins, and ill-fitting, thrift-store polyester pants that an old man had likely died in.

As you may have guessed, I used to be quite the high-fashion trendsetter. And as my tattered brown shoes pictured above indicate, now more than ever I'm still quite the high-fashion trendsetter. I'm a fashionista!

Since I'm male and clearly not much of a shopper, I was also curious if Denise's clients fell in step with some of those obvious gender stereotypes. Fifteen years ago, the majority of Denise's clients were men and they were mainly looking to be fitted for suits. Fast forward to the present day and everything's turned on its head: now the majority of Denise's clients are women and the men that she does see are less and less interested in suits. Denise blames the dot.com era and more casual clothing attitudes for this "major cultural shift". "Now you've got all these renegade people who are really good at what they do," she said. "You've got some surfer dude, roller skating, skate boarding guy who's brilliant at what he does, so employers don't care what he's wearing because he's brilliant." As a result, you've got guys in flip flops and long shorts shuffling around the workplace, instead of guys wearing beautifully pressed, Mad Men-esque suits.

Although Denise really enjoys working with males, this shift from mainly men to mainly women may actually turn out to be good for business. Male clients, it turns out, don't refer their friends and coworkers to Denise. "Men," she said, "are looking for any competitive edge they can get, whether it's work or dating, so they don't tell anyone about me." Women, on the other hand, don't begin to think of image consulting in this way. "Women think it's fun and feel great doing it," said Denise. "So they tell everyone about the services they get from me."

Complicated stuff, right? Denise gets to see first hand some of the prevailing ideas our culture has created about self-image and gender identity, which I think is really interesting. Needless to say, there's a lot more to this image consulting gig than first meets the eye. One thing's for sure: it's definitely not as simple as a 1980's dressing room montage.

The Griswold's are looking sharp!

Intermission #1 - Day of Art!

2010-05-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, I might interrupt Coffee with a Stranger's regular programming for something decidedly un-coffee and un-stranger. Yesterday, for example, I went to the California College of the Arts' MFA exhibition. Here are some of the things that I saw. All pictures taken by Nicole. Click to enlarge.

Scared silly by Crystal Gonzalez:

Solemnly agreeing with Sean Leake:

Preparing for the conclusion of this "mortal ebb" with Maggie Simpson:

Contemplating the possibility of collapsing boxes with Matthew Waldbillig:

Sometimes with James-David Mericle, a garage door isn't really a garage door:

And last but not least, Eduardo Gomez taps into one of my childhood obsessions: baseball cards!

Coffee + Stranger #6 - Coffee with Winky

2010-05-11T19:46:00.000-07:00

Stranger #6 had a common woman's name. Think something along the lines of Sarah or Jenny or Mary. But I'm not going to call her by her real name. Instead I'll refer to her as Winky. Like this:

;)

Why Winky? Well, I'll get to that, but first a little background information: I met Winky at the Blue Dot Cafe in Alameda, the small island city next to Oakland. When we met, she had only lived in Alameda for a couple of weeks, coming by the way of small town Wisconsin, college years at SCAD in Savannah, GA, and a post-Katrina New Orleans. At 26, she was the youngest of the strangers to meet with me so far. She had red hair, pale grey-blue eyes, a patriotic bracelet, and a pretty kick ass leather jacket. She was also someone who liked to keep busy: after a few short weeks in Alameda, she was already going to school for psychology, getting a certification in personal fitness training, trying to finish a movie/musical she'd written and filmed that was stuck in post-production (check out the promo here), writing two serial novels, and had joined a barbershop quartet and a softball league.

By comparison, I spent my day today listening to a baseball game on the radio. I might also have sent some emails and eaten a pretty tasty kiwi. And I took a shower. I'm clean as a whistle!

But what about this nickname? Winky. As with all good nicknames, there's a story behind Winky. My retelling of that story goes something like this:

Winky had moved to New Orleans, post-Katrina, for a job. A really good job. A job that could lead to other jobs in a booming industry. This job involved being a "set dresser" for the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Yes, that Benjamin Button - based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, it's the whimsical tale of a man who ages in reverse.

Wow! Big deal, right? We're talking Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, and the director of Forrest Gump here! And, as expected, this set dresser job led to other, similar jobs in the same industry, as apparently New Orleans is quickly becoming an up and coming city in the motion picture industry. Lots of stuff is being filmed and produced there now. It's like L.A.'s baby sister! In addition to Benjamin Button, Winky had a hand in movies such as In the Electric Mist, The Mortician, and a horror film by the name of The Final Destination. Here's the trailer for that last one, which is the latest installment in a pretty successful series of movies:

Winky, for her part, described Final Destination as a movie that "I wouldn't go see." What's more, working on that movie not only made her miserable, but it made her realize that the world of talking pictures might not be for her. She didn't like how the industry treated people and eventually even changed them: "In general," she said, "anybody, even the nicest person, is going to become tainted while working in this industry, and they get more selfish and high strung."

When I asked if she felt "tainted", she replied: "Yeah, I did for awhile, until I saw there was a light at the end of the tunnel."

And what was that light at the end of the tunnel? Quitting the movie business and getting the hell out of New Orleans, a town to which Winky was never enamored. But not before she went temporarily blind in one eye. Seriously. While working on Final Destination, there were a couple of days when things started to get suspiciously blurry in one of Winky's eyes. At first she didn't think much of this fuzziness. She thought, at worst, that maybe she had something stuck in her eyeball - like lint, dust, or a dead gnat. She complained every now and then to her co-workers until, eventually, her boss took notice and forced her to take some time off and see a doctor. A general eye doctor and a retina specialist later, the diagnosis came in: stress related retinal leaking.

Retinal leaking? Gross.

What's more, Winky let it slip that the retinal leaking in her eye might have had something to do with, wait for it, steroids! She slipped that little nugget into the conversation somewhat casually, almost to the point where I nearly missed it, until suddenly I had to interject:

Steroids? Wait. What?

Was there a point in Winky's life where she was going all Barry Bonds? Did she used to be a crazed, softball-mashing machine with muscles on her muscles, anger management issues, and an ever-expanding hat size?

Turns out that Winky was so stressed, busy, and reluctant to take a day off from working on Final Destination that she took steroids to squash a pesky flu bug. The steroids killed that flu bug dead in its tracks, but combined with the stress, likely triggered a little retinal leaking.

Holy shit!

Which leads to the inevitable question: what cures retinal leaking? In Winky's case, an eye patch and two to three weeks of making a conscious effort to relax did the trick. Not taking steroids also probably helped. She still plugged away at Final Destination, but she also forced herself to take her mind off work by going to the beach, playing some volleyball, and joining a pool league.

Pool, however, involves a lot of depth perception, which can be a little tricky when you're pretty much blind in one eye. At the same time, Winky was finding that her eye patch was kind of scratchy and uncomfortable. So while lining up her shots, she would flip up her eye patch and squint and WINK a lot at the balls on the table, much to the amusement of her fellow pool leaguers.

And, voila! Surrounded by blue chalk, green felt, and black balls, Winky was born!

Which brings me to one last point: where did Winky get those steroids? Maybe I'm going to all the wrong doctors, but I've never heard of prescribing steroids for the flu. I've heard of rest, chicken soup, and orange juice, but never steroids. Unfortunately, I failed to ask Winky to clear up this issue, so I'm at a loss.

I like to think that she got them in some shady, back-alley deal. Or maybe some Hollywood star gave them to her. Hollywood stars, after all, are always doing odd, weird, and crazy things. As well as meeting and/or working with stars like Brad Pitt, Peter Sarsgaard, and Mary Steenburgen, Winky did do some work for everyone's favorite Italian Stallion - Sylvester Stallone! If anyone could ever hook you up with muscle juice, I'd think it would be ol' Sly.

How's that for some rampant, potentially libelous speculation on my part? I'll look forward to a letter in the mail from Sly's lawyers. Or maybe, just maybe, Sly himself will come knocking on my door and deliver me a can of fire and brimstone whoop ass.

That will probably look something like this:

Coffee + Stranger #5 - Coffee with Foot Races, No Wandering Signs, and Screwing Up a Wee Bit

2010-05-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

Coffee with a Stranger, in case you hadn't noticed, is a work in progress. I'm still not exactly sure where I'm going with this project or what kind of writing will come out of it, but I do know that I'm having a damn good time. Everyone that I've met for coffee has been open, honest, and entirely game for a project that has a somewhat loosely defined structure and purpose. All in all, I'm just enjoying getting out, meeting some interesting people, and seeing what happens. Who needs structure and purpose anyway?

Since I'm taking a flying by the seat of my pants approach, though, there will inevitably be times when I screw up a wee bit. Take, for example, my meeting with Stranger #5. I thought I had it all planned out: we'd meet at SubRosa Coffee near the MacArthur BART station in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood, we'd talk it up, I'd record our conversation, and we'd go our separate, merry ways. Simple, right?

Well, apparently not. I learned, for instance, that I should really do some research before meeting someone at a coffee shop that I've never been to before. Turns out SubRosa, which was my suggestion by the way, isn't open at 6PM on a Tuesday. And even if it was open, there isn't much in the way of indoor seating in a shop the size of postage stamp.

So when Stranger #5, whose name is Gary, strolled up to the dark and increasingly deserted corner of 40th and Webster, I sheepishly asked if he'd mind searching for somewhere else to sit and have a cup of coffee. Gary, for his part, was totally game. After walking and small talking for a couple of blocks, we quickly discovered that this particular part of Temescal isn't exactly a hot spot for evening cups of coffee. Mixed Martial Arts, hair braiding, and hair extensions made from real human hair were all at our fingertips, but a cup of coffee? Not so much. We tried Cafe Portofino, a pizza and calzone joint on the corner of 40th and Telegraph, but the guy behind the counter mainly seemed puzzled when we asked for coffee at his pizzeria.

With things looking bleak and Gary's acupuncture appointment looming in the not so distant future, I threw a hail mary: why not try Lee's Donuts & Croissants? I spotted it out of the corner of my eye - a tiny storefront with a neon OPEN sign nestled in a strip mall across the street from Cafe Portofino. From the outside, it looks like this:

Take a good look at this picture, which I took several weeks after meeting with Gary. Note the "No Prowling!" warning. Try to wrap your head around the need for a "No Wandering!" warning. Keep in mind a dark and damp winter night. Keep in mind, too, that Gary and I are internet strangers and that Gary had been busy, you know, working all day. And no disrespect intended to the proprietors of Lee's Donuts & Croissants, but that unassuming storefront doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

If I were in Gary's shoes, I probably would have bailed. Made some excuse and gotten the hell out. Something along the lines of "dinner with friends", "left the stove on", or "forgot to feed my chinchillas" would have done the trick. But what did Gary do when I suggested good ol' Lee's Donuts & Croissants? He shrugged his shoulders, zipped up his San Francisco Giants jacket, and said, "Let's go for it."

Way to go, Gary!

What can I say about Lee's Donuts & Croissants? It was bright inside. Fluorescent light bright. There were, as the name implies, lots of donuts on display. I don't remember seeing croissants. Their coffee was burnt, but drinkable. When I later looked the place up on Yelp, I discovered it's actually best known for its fried chicken and not its croissants or donuts. Who would have guessed? The folks behind the counter, and there were several of them, seemed somewhat amused by Gary and I. I caught a few stares in our direction and smiles exchanged behind that case of Boston Creams and Apple Fritters. But who can blame them? I'm not sure it's everyday they get two guys who come in, order only two coffees in small styrofoam cups, and who sit in one of their yellow/off-white booths for 40 minutes with a tape recorder between them.

Which brings me to my next wee little screw up. The tape recorder. Turns out I don't really know how to operate a tape recorder. When I later sat down to listen to my conversation with Gary, I discovered that I recorded exactly 13 seconds of our time together before a telling CLICK and silence for the rest of the tape. 13 seconds. Really. I timed it.

Sorry, Gary!

So I'm working off memory alone here. And some illegible notes I scrawled in a spiral notebook. Here are a few things that struck me about Gary and our conversation:

1) Despite being a great sport and game for a venue change, Gary wasn't without his suspicions. He admitted that when we first met outside of a closing SubRosa Coffee, he sized me up - if I turned out to be real crazy, he decided he could "at least" outrun me to the BART station. Also, when everything was said and done and we were finishing up at Lee's Donuts & Croissants, he asked me to "level" with him and tell him "what this project was really about." Was there some "catch" I wasn't telling him about? Was I, for example, "counting the number of times he said coffee or something?" I'm still not sure he believed that all I wanted was to literally meet strangers for a cup of coffee. And not to toot my own horn, but I think that foot race back to the BART would have been closer than Gary anticipated...

2) Gary is into Magic Cards. I don't understand how Magic Cards work or their appeal, so I asked Gary to explain them to me because I don't like not understanding things. Gary did his best, but the whole concept still flew way over my head. I just don't get it.

3) I realize I forgot to ask Gary about the significance of his email address. It involved the words "Standing Warrior", which Google tells me can involve ancient statues or the following yoga move:

Knee Bend Standing Warrior Pose in Hatha Yoga -- powered by eHow.com
4) His email signature also involved a quote from the TV show Lost. The actor who plays Benjamin Linus apparently said the following:

"I notice more and more that grownups are just later versions of the children they once were."

Yikes! If that's true, I'll always be both obsessed and terrible at Mortal Combat for SEGA, I'll never be able to get through the movie Labyrinth without freaking out, and I'll always blush when I talk to girls.

5) Gary, who worked for the government doing worker pension stuff, was someone who used the internet as a tool rather than a crutch. Instead of hiding behind the easy, stay-at-home anonymity that the internet provides, Gary actually used the world wide web as a means to meet people in the flesh. From social networking sites to Craigslist to online dating services like JDate, Gary had met fellow Magic Card enthusiasts, hiking buddies, friends, romantic partners, and even random dudes who meet him at dark street corners in Temescal for a cup of coffee.

6) I pressed Gary to tell me some juicy, horror stories about the world of online dating. Not that I'm against the idea, but I've heard some hilarious and crazy stuff from friends. He replied that he really didn't have any horror stories, and that he's actually had pretty good luck with the whole thing. I was hoping for tales of 90-year-old women posing as 30-somethings, flatulence at the movies, and weeping at dinner over iPhone pictures of recently deceased cats, but no such luck.

After shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries, Gary left the bright confines of Lee's Donuts & Croissants. I bought a donut, and you know what? It wasn't half bad.

Coffee with a Stranger #4 - Coffee with a Copy Cat or Crazy Coincidence?

2010-04-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

How's that for some rock star alliteration?

In mid-March, I did something that we've all vainly done before: I googled myself. Well, more specifically, I googled the title of this blog. I wanted to see if this little project of mine was blowing up the internet with its awesomeness.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found this little gem: www.coffeewithastranger.com

Now, I don't think so highly of myself and my creative brilliance to think that Coffee with a Stranger is a unique, never-thought-of-before idea. But this was a little suspicious. Here, a month or so after I created my blog, was my exact same idea using very similar language on a brand spanking new website designed by some dude on the East Coast. I knew it was brand spanking new because in January, when I started my Coffee with a Stranger blog, I searched to see that no one else was already doing the same project. There was no one, so I got the ball rolling and set up the blog that you're reading at this very moment.

The big question, of course, is whether or not this guy is ripping me off. In all honesty, I'm torn. On the one hand, I'm a naturally suspicious person. I'm the kind of guy who, if I don't receive any mail for a couple of days, assumes that I've got neighbors trying to steal my identity or that my mailman somehow has a crazy vendetta against me. My first reaction was outrage. I thought lots of unpleasant, unprintable thoughts, such as, "Who does this rascal think he is?" or "This situation does not tickle my fancy." I spent that night of discovery pacing the apartment, blathering at my girlfriend while she was trying to sleep, and racking my brain for some connection or six degrees of separation that linked me to the author of this very similar blog. With a work day rapidly approaching, I ended up choking down a couple of beers just to calm down and get some sleep.

On the other hand, and as I mentioned above, I am well aware that Coffee with a Stranger isn't a unique idea. The internet is a big place and maybe it's just a coincidence that we set up the same website within several weeks of each other. Much stranger things have happened in this world of ours. And when I emailed this fellow (yes, I did contact him), he seemed as genuine and earnest as one can be via email when he wrote, "Great minds think alike apparently!" He also claimed that he'd been taking notes on strangers he'd met at Panera Bread outlets for several years, but had just got around to setting up a website to compile all of these interactions.

So what am I supposed to think of this whole situation? I'm really not so sure, although I'm skeptical that this fellow didn't at least see my site before setting up his own. Who doesn't at least google a blog idea/title before setting up their own site?

After a short period of correspondence, I'm no longer in contact with this other blogger. Some friends or friends of friends of mine may or may not have sent him some, how can I put this, un-PG emails. These emails, understandably, were not well received.

As the days have passed since I discovered this other site, I've obviously calmed down a bit and put things in perspective. There's really nothing I can do but keep writing and meeting with strangers, which has been a blast and a great experience. I'm hoping that initial outrage is understandable, though. I really can't think of anything more frustrating for a writer than the possibility that someone has plagiarized your words or ideas. Personally, I have to screw up a lot of courage to even reveal my writing to others. What if it's bad? What if it's stupid? What if it's embarrassing? I put so much time, energy, nail-biting, and over-analysis into every word I write, so the thought of someone stealing those words is kind of a nightmare.

I'd love to hear other thoughts on this whole situation - am I dealing with Coffee with a Copy Cat, Coffee with a Crazy Coincidence, or something gray and messy that lands somewhere in between? If you've got an opinion, please post a comment below or send me an email at coffee.stranger@gmail.com.

Coffee with a Stranger #3 - Coffee with Expanding Your Comfort Zone

2010-03-29T19:12:00.000-07:00

There are times when we all need to expand our comfort zone. Maybe you're in a rut. Maybe you're bored. Maybe you just broke up with your girlfriend and you've decided to "show her" by discovering a little thing called whiskey, not showering for several weeks, and starting a punk band with some street kids you met at a NOFX concert.

Or maybe you get in your grandpa's Honda Civic and you drive across the continent with your dad for a low-paying, part-time job and an interview for a possible "manny" position in Oakland, California. Maybe you stop along the way at Graceland and the Grand Canyon. In the car, maybe you listen to a ridiculous David Baldacci book-on-tape that features an even more ridiculous narrator who raises his voice several octaves whenever a lady is speaking. Maybe your dad, who's flying home once you reach San Francisco, rubs his hands together multiple times during the trip and says, "This is really neat!" Maybe you spend New Year's Eve in a hotel in Bakersfield, CA, and while your dad sleeps and you peel labels off bottles of Sierra Nevada, you wonder what the hell you're doing moving 4537 kilometers/2707 miles away from almost everyone you know.

Or maybe you do something a little less extreme. Maybe you're bumming around Craigslist, looking for a job in the coffee roasting world because you're sick of working in "ink" and when you search for keyword "coffee", some post entitled Coffee with a Stranger pops up and you decide, "Yeah, whatever, why not?"

Well, that's exactly how I ended up meeting with Jason, Stranger #3 and a native of Wisconsin, at Blue Bottle Coffee in Oakland's Jack London Square. In Jason's own words, "This isn't something I would normally do, but it's not like I've got anything else going on and it's been explained to me that I should start doing things outside my comfort zone." Then he laughed.

I'll take it! Coffee with a Stranger is open to any and all reasons for meeting over a cup of coffee.

Unfortunately, this particular Blue Bottle Coffee didn't have much in the way of seating, so Jason and I set out on foot to find another place to sit in Jack London Square. We ended up on a bench outside of the train station where we were serenaded by train whistles, the squeal of train brakes, and pre-recorded arrival and departure announcements. We also witnessed a little boy wander up to our bench to deliver a couple of swift kicks to a nearby garbage can. Kid's gonna be the next Pele!

When Jason, who I'd guess is in his mid-to-late 30's, first mentioned that he used to work in "ink", I thought of one thing: tattoos. I eyed his cropped, salt and pepper hair, Oakley sunglasses, long-sleeve Carhartt shirt, cargo pants, and hiking boots and wondered if he was hiding some extravagant tattoo somewhere underneath. He didn't seem the type, but I've been wrong on these kinds of things before. Turns out, however, that when Jason says "ink", he's talking more along the lines of McCormick Spices and Benefit Cosmetics. And, no, that doesn't mean tattoos of basil or dried chilies on your knuckles or lip gloss and eye shadow permanently etched onto your face. No, instead we're talking about product packaging. Jason used to work in commercial ink, mixing and matching different colors of ink for a company that manufactured packaging for the likes of McCormick Spices and Benefit Cosmetics.

Swing and a miss on my part, eh?

Speaking of which, Jason and I actually talked a lot about "swinging and missing". For example, he somewhat jokingly suggested that if things didn't work out for me financially and job wise in the Bay Area, I could always consider Spokane, WA. Jason once lived in Spokane, which he described as "kind of a crappy place, but if you're earning a decent wage you can live like a king in Spokane!" After a little research, I discovered that "Live like a king in Spokane!" isn't Spokane's official city slogan, but I'm thinking it probably should be. It might, however, have a tough time competing with this:

Jason, who was a pretty even keel kind of guy, was at his most animated when we talked about coffee. Although he'd mainly been working in the non-tattoo-related-ink industry and was currently unemployed, he had just applied for a coffee roasting position. He did have some coffee roasting experience, too, as he and his ex-wife used to roast coffee out of their garage when they were living in Portland, OR. They even had a logo and a name for their particular brand - Blue Train Coffee. Jason fished out one of their old business cards from his wallet for me to see. The card was dog-eared and a little wrinkled, but it did have a cool design and logo featuring a blue, toy train engine.

There was something both really endearing and kind of sad about Jason's memories of his home-based coffee roasting business. He was definitely very proud (and rightfully so) of what he had accomplished - he even offered to give me his old business card before realizing that it was likely his only remaining one. But he also admitted that it made him "kind of depressed" to think about Blue Train Coffee. It was, after all, a project he had worked on with his now ex-wife. He roasted the coffee, she did the design, and they worked together making sales and attending the occasional roasting conference. Jason estimated that they'd sold over 1000 pounds of the stuff. "I had plans," he told me, "to do a lot more with the roasting business, but then, you know, I got divorced, moved down here, and now I'm living in a studio apartment where there's obviously not enough room to roast coffee." In his even keel way, though, Jason seemed excited and hopeful about this coffee roasting position. It even involved working under a "master roaster" who used to work for Peet's.

"I'm going to give it a shot," said Jason, twirling his empty coffee cup in his hands and nervously bouncing his leg up and down. "And if it doesn't work out, maybe I'll be living in mom's basement in Wisconsin. At least I have that to fall back on, right? I can go to sleep at night knowing I'm not going to be out on the street."

By this point and nearing the end of my conversation with Jason, I wasn't exactly sure which "it" he was referring to when he said he was "going to give it a shot." He could have been referring to the coffee roasting position, living in Oakland, or maybe even this general notion of getting out and expanding that comfort zone. But it was also entirely possible that he was talking about something completely different, something that we hadn't talked about explicitly. Jason often seemed lost in his own thoughts while we talked on that bench outside of the train station. He was always polite, friendly, and honest, but as he spoke with me, I felt like he was busy working through something private and difficult in his own mind. Like he was kneading a thought into a slow fruition or, like that empty coffee cup in his hands, he was twirling a difficult idea through his mind, circling around it, and wondering when and how to tackle it head on.

Once the sun began to set behind the warehouses and lofts around us, Jason and I headed back to our respective cars - me to my grandpa's Honda Civic and he to his Hyundai Elantra. One of the last things Jason mentioned was that he'd fought a ticket he'd received for unknowingly driving in the bus lane onto the Bay Bridge. It was an honest mistake. The signage really isn't clear, so he took pictures to prove his side of things and got ready for his court appearance. Fortunately, the ticket was thrown out - the issuing officer never showed up to court to disprove Jason. I mentioned that I thought small victories are important, and that you've got to keep things positive.

Jason smiled, we shook hands, and we went our separate ways.

Coffee with a Stranger #2 – Coffee with Time Traveling Steampunks

2010-03-09T16:26:00.000-08:00

When I think of time travel, I think of Jean-Claude Van Damme. Yes, that Jean-Claude Van Damme - the Belgian action star of the late 80's and early-t0-mid 90's who proudly sported a mullet before it was ironic and managed to incorporate at least one scene where he does the splits to dodge punches, roundhouse kicks, bullets, or missiles into every movie he made. You see, several of my formative years coincided with the peak of an era that I like to call Van Damme Mania. It was an era where it seemed like every couple of months or so, JCVD would release some high-octane, adrenaline pumping, action movie. Living in a somewhat staid small town during both Van Damme Mania and my pre-teen years, my impressionable friends and I gravitated towards these movies. We had high standards after all:

Fiery explosions? Check.
Bloody fights? Check.
Royal rumbles? Check.
Easy to identify good and bad guys based on embarrassing racial stereotypes? Check.
The occasional bare breast or two? Check, check, and more check!

Aside from blood, boobs, and explosions, JCVD films often had another running theme: time travel. Well, that and twins, but I won't get into that here. There was a lot of JCVD going back in time, accidentally roundhousing, shooting, or exploding a seemingly insignificant tree, ladybug, or evil bad guy, and then coming back to a present where he didn't exist, he had an evil twin, a loving girlfriend was married to an arch villain, or everyone was still riding horses instead of driving cars. Need a visual? Check this out:

Time travel is complicated stuff, isn't it?

Oddly enough, other people have different associations when it comes to the idea of time travel. Take Kristy, Stranger #2 in this little project of mine, who I met at the Bread Workshop in North Berkeley. She was in her early to mid 20's, originally from Connecticut, and an accomplished knitter judging by the red hat she was wearing and the scarf she was working on when I arrived a little late for our meeting. For her, time travel has nothing to do with mullets, splits, and explosions. Instead it involves steampunks and 4th century Celtic monks. Or, more specifically, modern day steampunks who steal a time machine to go back in time to chat with some 4th century Celtic monks.

If you're anything like me, that last sentence raises a lot of questions. Like what's a steampunk? Or what differentiates a 4th century Celtic monk from, say, a 6th century Celtic monk? Or where can I steal me a time traveling device?

Steampunks, according to Kristy, "dress and look like they dropped out of a Charles Dicken s novel." She also described them as "anti-mass production" and as "purposeful Luddites." After my own superficial research on the Google, I'd add that it looks like they wish they could hit the pause button aesthetically and technologically somewhere in and around the Victorian era. They also seem to be big fans of steam and gear based gadgets, funky top hats and aviator goggles, and the writings of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.

As for the difference between 4th and 6th century Celtic monks, I have no idea and Kristy didn't get into details. To tell you the truth, I'm not even entirely clear on how one would define a Celtic monk, no matter what century he or she may be from. Kristy, however, was focused on one monk in particular: a historically real monk who was apparently living large in a Roman emperor's palace and then one day said "nuts" to that and gave it all up to live in the desert and weave mats. Instead of saying "nuts", though, Kristy made what I would describe as a farting noise and ended the description by remarking: "Then he spent the rest of his life sitting on his butt and doing that." Steampunks, for their part, would relate to such a lifestyle - not necessarily for the weaving, butt-sitting, and desert living, but because of an appreciation for the rejection of luxuries and the embracing of a simpler life. So why not steal a time machine and check this guy and his 4th century cohorts out?

And where's Kristy getting all this material from? I don't remember JCVD playing a Celtic monk in any of his movies, so it can't be that. Surprisingly, Kristy doesn't rip off her time traveling ideas from dated action movies. Instead she's actually writing her very own novel about this stuff! When I met with her at the Bread Workshop, she was 60 pages into her novel about modern day steampunks who steal a time machine to go back in time to chat with 4th century Celtic monks. What's even more impressive is that she writes 1300 words a day, either working on this novel or writing poetry. 1300 words! Meanwhile, it takes me weeks to write even one of these Coffee with a Stranger posts.

I've really got to get my shit together.

Although I never asked her outright, I don't think Kristy would identify herself as a steampunk. After all, she wasn't wearing aviator goggles and she's definitely not a "complete atheist", which is how she described most steampunks. In fact, while living in Boston with her husband, Kristy thought she had a call to the Episcopalian priesthood. She even approached her priest and asked him how to get the priesthood ball rolling. Her priest, however, urged her to take things slow and instead go through a process known as "discernment". This process basically involves taking some time to do some work for the Church, think about your relationship with the Big Guy, and decide whether priesthood is really for you. Kristy ended up doing a "community organizer" internship for a church in the Allston-Brighton area of Boston. Needless to say, she met up with a lot of Allston-Brighton residents for cups of coffee, which is why she decided to meet up with me. "Good karma" is how she described it, but I'm left wondering: can an Episcopalian priest believe in karma?

A couple of weeks after our cup of coffee, I randomly bumped into Kristy. She and her husband were in line behind my ladyfriend and I at Ici Ice Cream. Her husband, a nice fellow, is the reason why they moved out to the West Coast. He's a computer programmer/developer by trade and last year he got a job with hi5.com. Hi5 does all those games you see on Facebook - stuff like Sorority Row and Mafia Wars. Or as Kristy explained, they're those social networking games where "instead of connecting with your best friend from second grade, you get to shoot up your friend from second grade!"

I don't know about you, but I think JCVD would appreciate this type of social networking.

Meanwhile, we all ordered some delicious ice cream, exchanged some pleasantries, and had some laughs. Kristy had written another 20 pages of her novel (which I'm hoping she'll, hint, hint, let me take a look at), whereas I still hadn't written a Coffee with a Stranger post about our cup of coffee together. I'm thinking it's time I steal a time machine, deliver a roundhouse kick to something or someone, and cross my fingers that that will lead to an alternate present where I procrastinate less.

It's worth a shot, right?

Coffee + Stranger #1 (Part II): Coffee with Good Days and Bad Days

2010-02-03T17:07:00.000-08:00

Apparently adult snuggle parties are a thing nowadays. Who knew? Not me. These are, I learned, organized parties where consenting groups of adults and strangers get together to lie around and do some non-sexual snuggling, kind of like that big monster pile in Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are (see above around the 1:10 mark). Curious, I googled the shit out of the phrase “snuggle party” and actually found several “how to guides to snuggle partying": you can find examples here and here. Among other things, it’s suggested that these fiestas include drinks sans booze, light snacks, soft, cuddle inducing music (maybe a little Monsters of Folk? I could snuggle all day with those monsters!), snuggle “lifeguards” to reign in potential amorousness, and the understanding that the occasional boner could arise. Furthermore, if you’re having trouble pulling such a party together, it’s suggested you defer to the experts - certified cuddle party facilitators.

I wonder how they’re doing in this economy?

And how did I learn about snuggle partying? From Marianne¹ , the fun, open, and energetic first of hopefully many strangers in this little project of mine. Although she herself had never been to a snuggle party, Marianne mentioned these shindigs as an example of why I might get many responses to my Coffee with a Stranger ad on Craigslist. People seem to be increasingly searching for “real” interactions with others, even strangers, so what’s the harm in a quick, free cup of coffee with some guy from the Internet?

And what can I say about my initial impression of Marianne? She was in her late 30’s, seemed tall to me, and had long, dark hair that was wet from a shower after a run around Lake Merritt. And as I mentioned in Part I of my experience at Café Madrid in downtown Oakland, she was a little late for our meeting. 15 or 20 minutes late to be exact, which gave me plenty of time to weave a fun web of neurotic, self-conscious, and self-doubting thoughts in my busy little brain. Good times!

Marianne, however, turned out to be well worth the wait. How could I not enjoy someone who, after some initial awkwardness and everyday chitchat, broke the ice with the story of the first time her boogers froze up due to horrifyingly cold weather? That’s when I realized Marianne and I could really talk and get down to business. If you can talk boogers ² with a stranger without it being a reference to your kid or pet, you’re okay in my books.

If I had to describe Marianne in one word, I would use “expressive”. She had these huge, brown eyes that you could just tell didn’t miss a whole lot. She was also always in motion in some shape or form, even before the caffeine in her café con leche had a chance to work its magic. Her hands were always moving and she constantly shifted her body as she sat across from me. This isn’t to say that she squirmed around like some little boy who needs to go to the bathroom, but you could tell she’s someone who likes to be active. She also had the habit of pulling down the sleeves of her sweater and scrunching them into her palm when we talked about more serious things than boogers.

Things got a little more serious, for example, when we talked about “good days” vs. “bad days”. I know all about good and bad days – the difference being those days where I strut around like a man on a mission versus those days where I’m convinced my hair looks weird, my pants feel too short, I’m constantly checking to see if my fly is down, and I’ve definitely managed to dribble coffee down the front of my shirt. Obviously we all have our good and bad days. Marianne, however, talked about those particularly painful days where you pose those difficult “self-worth questions”. Scrunching her sleeves into her palms, she said that sometimes she felt like she wasn’t meeting the expectations placed on women in her age group. She was in her late 30’s, divorced, unemployed, and not preoccupied with burping babies or driving tweens to soccer practice. She felt it was easy, then, to sometimes feel like she didn’t fit into any of those “worthwhile/worthiness boxes” that society, media, and well-meaning friends and family want to place us in. Essentially, if you’re not a mother wearing high-waist mom jeans or a career woman wearing business suits a la Condoleeza Rice, what are you and where do you fit in? And if you’re not in the “mom box” or the “career box” like everyone else around you, who do you hang out with and what is your community? Jokingly, Marianne wished that she could be a part of a more “alternative” community. If, she said, she was a “transgendered polyamorist, maybe there’d be a stronger and more supportive community of like-minded people waiting for her?

This is not to say that Marianne doesn’t have good friends and a nice community in the Bay Area. Far from it, as she spoke of several friends and the fun things that they do together. Interestingly, though, she did mention that she wasn’t going to tell just anyone that she’d met up with me. Even some of her closer friends might think our encounter was a somewhat “odd” thing to do. I hadn’t thought about this. How many people might I meet during this project who might not tell anyone about meeting me or who might be quite selective, including the careful omission of husbands, wives, significant others, siblings, kids, and BFFs? Is there something inherently weird or taboo about agreeing to this particular kind of meeting? Marianne even mentioned that she has friends who are quite comfortable with one-night stands with strangers met at a bar, but who would never agree to a much less intimate cup of coffee with an Internet stranger. I wonder what kind of numbers I’d get if I took the following poll:

What are you more comfortable with?

1) A one-night stand with a stranger picked up at a bar.
2) A cup of coffee with an Internet stranger.
3) Neither. Both are gross/crazy/unappealing/immoral.

Maybe I could get Star Magazine to tackle this subject in their next big poll?

All in all, Marianne was a great test subject for my first Coffee with a Stranger. She might actually have been perfect, as she was a firm believer that people often “reveal more to strangers than to close friends.” Strangers, after all, never have to see each other again after an encounter. That’s the beauty of being a stranger, despite the loneliness and isolation that may come with it. If you’ve moved around a lot in your life, as Marianne had from California to New York City to the Twin Cities to Scandinavia and back again, maybe you can relate.

Eventually my conversation with Marianne petered out. We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. Later that night, she would send me a nice email thanking me for the cup of coffee and asking that I keep her posted on my project’s progress. In the meantime, I’m going to try to keep my “bad days” to a minimum and, if all else fails, I guess I could give an Oakland snuggle/cuddle party a shot?

¹ Marianne, by the way, isn't her real name. This particular stranger had some concerns about privacy, which I wholeheartedly respect, so she asked that I come up with a pseudonym. Why Marianne? Lately, I've been listening to Beck's cover of Songs of Leonard Cohen with MGMT, Devendra Banhart, and others, so I thought I'd give Marianne a shot.
² In case you were wondering, Marianne's boogers were frozen while she was living in the Twin City area of Minnesota. I can't say she enjoyed the experience or would like to repeat it any time soon, but at least, I guess, it was memorable?

Coffee with a Stranger #1 (Part I) - Coffee with Self-Doubt

2010-02-03T13:31:00.000-08:00

My first Coffee with a Stranger was scheduled on a Tuesday afternoon at Cafe Madrid in downtown Oakland. I had no idea what to expect. Not only had I never been to Cafe Madrid, but this particular stranger was a somewhat guarded and secretive individual in our pre-meeting emails. It was made very clear that privacy was of the utmost importance to this person, what with Google's prying eyes tracing our every step like a bloodhound following a potent scent with wild eyes, lolling tongue, and bristled fur. Or at least that's the way I picture it. I am, after all, a guy who refuses to post anything personal on a certain social networking site. Instead my page features the mildly inappropriate exploits of a stuffed animal. Seriously. I even spent time posing this stuffed animal in scandalous positions for the eye of my camera.

So, yes, I was going into this meeting with very little prior knowledge of this stranger. I wasn't even sure of gender, as his or her emails cheerfully signed off only with a pair of initials. I did know that this individual found my ad on Craigslist while searching for jogging partners. There was also mention of always being interested in writing, but being "too chickenshit" to take a class or pursue the idea further. Some other tidbits shared were the fact that he or she was unemployed, looking for temp work, and that some friends had had "scary experiences" with online dating.

Armed with these details, a tape recorder, a pencil, and a notebook, I head to Cafe Madrid. It was a dreary, overcast winter afternoon and downtown Oakland was, as per usual, somewhat deserted. As I approached the cafe, a woman coming from the opposite direction was also heading for the same cafe.

"Aha!" I thought to myself, mentally stabbing the air with my finger. "Maybe she's the one behind those cheerful initials!"

This woman was short, likely in her mid-thirties, and had long, wavy brown hair that reached down to her shoulders. She carried a squat, brown bag over her shoulders and a massive book in her hands. She looked up at me, looked as if she might smile or say something, then quickly looked back down and hurried into the cafe.

I was crushed! I was sure this was my mysterious first stranger and that she had taken one look at me and freaked out. As per our agreement via email, I was wearing my brand new, Flashback Friday Toronto Blue Jays hat (an incredible Christmas gift from my sister and the most noticeable piece of clothing that I own), so there was no mistaking me. After all, other than Raiders' hats, jackets, tattoos, eye patches, and head-to-foot costumes, there's not much sports paraphernalia being worn in downtown Oakland.

I followed this woman into the coffee shop. I may even have held the door open for her. My gut said that she was the one. I stood behind her in line, listened as she ordered a cup of tea, and watched as she fumbled between her squat purse, her Biblically sized book, and her wallet. I was even extra nice to her at the milk and sugar table. "Take your time," I assured her, my small coffee in my hand, as she rushed and fumbled some more with bags and books while pouring milk and sugar into her tea. I got a wane smile for that little effort. I realize now that maybe, just maybe, I might have been freaking her out with my expectant stares and over-politeness. But I was just trying to be nice! As I topped my coffee with milk and sugar, I watched disappointedly as she shuffled off to a far corner of the cafe. And by far corner, I mean tremendously far, as Cafe Madrid is really quite spacious despite a rather small clientele.

I decided I too should take a seat. I sat near the front door by a large window that looked out onto the street. And, no, don't worry, I didn't sit uncomfortably close to that woman who I suspected was Stranger #1, so I could continue to stare at her from beneath the brim of my brand new Blue Jays' hat. That would be odd. We were, in actuality, almost at exact opposite sides of the cafe, although I still had a clear view of her. She was busy sipping her tea and reading her Biblically sized text. I wondered what that big book could be. Harry Potter number four, five, or six? An Avatar-esque sci-fi/fantasy novel? Foucault's History of Madness? The Bible?

This is when the self-doubt really started to kick in. Was it ridiculous to think that this project could actually work? I mean, really, who in their right mind would agree to meet me at a coffee shop, so I could record and write about an unscripted, shoot-the-shit session between the two of us? Did this woman across the coffee shop, quietly reading, sipping her tea, and fiddling with her hair, see something creepy about me that I'd never noticed before? Was I too young? Too old? Overdressed for the occasion? Underdressed? Did I have spinach stuck in my teeth or Worchester sauce splattered across my cheek? Or maybe I just looked a wee bit ridiculous in my brand spanking new Toronto Blue Jays hat? Maybe not as ridiculous as this guy to the left, but close?

Soon 5, 10, 15, and finally 20 minutes passed as I nursed my small coffee before a table laid out with my tape recorder, pencil, and notebook. Part of me wanted to give up on this project entirely and head home with my tail between my legs. That is, of course, until I focused my attention once again back to that woman with the Biblically sized text. She had to be the one! I had to confront her! Looking back, it's somewhat odd that I didn't first consider that maybe I'd just been stood up or forgotten. I really had it in my head that that unsuspecting woman was my stranger, but for some reason she'd taken one look at me and decided against our meeting. It was then that I decided to approach her. To walk across that cavernous coffee shop and ask this woman if she was here to meet a stranger for a cup of coffee. To confront her. To figure this situation out. Why not give it a shot? Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

That, apparently, is what self-doubt can do to a guy trying to kick-start a writing project involving anonymous strangers found over the internet. I battered my doubts from the internal (me) to the external (unsuspecting woman) like a birdie hit between two hard-smacking, trash-talking badminton players.

Before I could initiate what was bound to be a somewhat awkward and accusatory conversation, luckily another woman came rushing into the coffee shop. Her hair wet and recently brushed, she took a quick look around before making a beeline for a certain brand spanking new Toronto Blue Jays hat. This little project of mine still had some life!

What is Coffee with a Stranger?

2010-01-31T22:52:00.001-08:00

Coffee with a Stranger started with the following ad, which I posted in the "Activities" section on Craigslist. Unemployed, a wee bit restless, and looking to get back into the habit of writing, I thought I'd roll up my sleeves, drink too much caffeine, and see what happens!

SF bay area craigslist > east bay > community > activity partners
Coffee with a stranger! (Oakland/Berkeley/Alameda)

Date: 2010-01-07, 12:05AM PST
Reply to: your anonymous craigslist address will appear here

Do you enjoy coffee? Do you, despite your parents' warnings, enjoy talking to strangers? If so, then do I ever have an activity for you!

Basically, I'm looking to start a little writing project. It involves me sitting down over a cup of coffee and talking to a stranger. Then I'll write about it and post it on a blog of some sort. Simple, right?

So who am I looking for? ANYONE. Seriously. As long as you have an open mind, are willing to meet me at a coffee shop for a 10-20 minute conversation, and are comfortable with the fact that I'll be recording and eventually writing about whatever we chat about. I'll even pay for your cup of coffee! How's that for incentive?

If you're interested, please send me an email for more details. Thanks!
• Location: Oakland/Berkeley/Alameda
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests