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

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!

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

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

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?

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

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

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 Dickens 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?