Hold the Foam, with Jean Chicago

An Intrepid Introduction

Time flows differently inside a cafe. Outside, taxes are due, semesters begin and end, "Walk" and "Don't Walk" signs flash in alternating sequence. Inside a cafe--especially inside the Apocryphal Cafe--eons pass in moments as novels are conceived, gestated and birthed. Philosophies are annotated and incarnated. Cargo cults are revived. Caffinated people and ideas flirt with eachother in all possible combinations. It may be a commercial business on the second floor of a soulless shopping mall, but the Apocryphal Cafe holds more mystery, romance and political intrigue than any dim, smoke-filled cafe in Amsterdam or Paris. It is a cafe attached to a bookstore in a college town somewhere in the continental United States. You've probably flown over us. It's the sort of over-educated town where your cab driver has a PhD in medieval French poetry, and where you can't make jokes about something not being "rocket science," because someone's bound to say "Actually I am a rocket scientist."

An americano-drinking customer once confided in me that he thought a barista sounded like a South American freedom fighter, who for undisclosed reasons of an undoubtedly sensitive nature, had sought asylum behind the cafe surfboard. In a way, it's true. In the six months I've been brewing coffee at the Apocryphal Cafe I've come to know and love this strange world and its coffee achieving baristas. Of course we have our competitors--The Day Old Bagel, Seattle's Piss-poor Coffee, Queequeg's--but only at the Apocryphal Cafe is every barista a stunningly attractive, great souled genius. Only at the Apocryphal Cafe is the chai always sweet, but not too sweet, the bagels formed in infinite circles and the coffee is always just brewed. Every barista has his own shining daemon; her own forte; his own oeuvre; her own story. These columns will chronicle our fight for freedom of the muse, freedom of own unique point of view, freedom to live and tell our stories. Order an annotated bagel with a footnote of cream cheese, and welcome to the Apocryphal Cafe.

--Jean Chicago