New York Sucks

June 12, 2008 in Bourgie Complaints, Muffins by smalinky | 8 comments

I was going to head out to do work someplace besides the single room that constitutes my office/bedroom/living room/kitchen, and then I heard that the (unfortunately re-named) Hopscotch Cafe (formerly Alt Coffee) has closed! Though I sort of missed the anarchist decor of the Alt Coffee days (couches with no springs, piles of broken computer monitors in the bathroom), I have appreciated the relative calm and reliable wifi of Hopscotch. Why are there no good coffeeshops in this stupid city? Unless you want to spend 20 bucks at a fake french bistro, there is nowhere to go in this godforsaken place, I swear. This is why Greg and I have decided that, if academia doesn’t work out, we are going to open your dream coffeeshop. It will be called Secret Amazing Cafe, but the regulars will just call it Secret Amazing. They will come for the good lighting, friendly staff, fresh baked scones and music selections that strike the perfect balance between interesting but not distracting or pretentious. They will say “Hi Craig” or “Hi Greg” when they come in, and they will know which of us is which. They will think, “I always knew there must be some secret amazing cafe I just hadn’t discovered yet, and I am so glad that I finally did.” Everyone will get work done, and they will all be happy. On the weekends, when their parents are in town visiting, they will come for the unlimited mimosa brunch, and take a needed and deserved respite from their work.

  1. Jac on June 15, 2008 at 5:03 pm

    Sugar Sweet Sunshine rocks my world, though I don’t know if I’d like it for work more than relaxation. It’s on Rivington.

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    1. smalinky on June 16, 2008 at 10:59 am

      Oh yea, the cupcakes there are pretty stellar. I tried to do work there once, but I felt like I was ruining everyone else’s good time. You don’t want to be the one bringing the fun factor down, but thanks for the reminder that I need a cupcake!

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  2. Andrew on June 17, 2008 at 10:04 pm

    That’s funny, I was just going to write a post on my blog about how there are all these great little coffeeshops in Park Slope, but then I remembered everyone hates Park Slope, or at least so the Times says. (PS – just started reading your blog not long ago; very nicely done!)

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  3. smalinky on June 17, 2008 at 11:25 pm

    Hi Andrew — That is funny… I have a friend from school who is always trying to convince me to meet her in Park Slope for study dates, and I am somehow totally unable to leave Manhattan though I know I will find exactly what I’m looking for. I’ve been enjoying your blog as well, obviously — especially excited to see your posts on actor-network theory. (And btw I agree with your comments about Latour’s speaking style — I saw him give a talk at NYU in 2007 and found him totally engaging and funny; Ian Hacking gave the lecture in that series this past year and was a heartbreaking disappointment — he literally made no sense at all.) I’ve found ANT so helpful in terms of opening up thought and pushing the questions I can ask, I feel like sociology would really benefit from a deeper engagement with that work. ANT certainly unsettles a lot of sociological premises, and more than than, complicates a lot of either/or debates (structure v. agency, for example) by putting the debate itself into question. I look forward to reading more of your thoughts on these topics!

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  4. Emily on June 18, 2008 at 9:48 am

    I tried last weekend to do some reading at the Brooklyn Museum, since it’s just down the block from my house, has air conditioning, and, in the American art section, has a little grouping of four comfortable chairs in the middle of a roomful of American art. I settled in with my book and my notebook but found that, actually, one can’t really just read anywhere there’s room. I felt myself very self-consciously on display.

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  5. Andrew on June 18, 2008 at 4:42 pm

    Too bad about Hacking; he’s absolutely one of my favorite philosophers. And I’m glad to hear of your enthusiasm for ANT: I find it revelatory and (maybe this a strange way of describing it), magnificently sane, even though I find that in some of the circles I run in it’s treated with some suspicion. I’d blog about it more frequently but unfortunately I find that more ‘academic’ posts require an investment in time and energy that I’ve not felt like making lately – hence the shorter, more gossipy or FIY bits – but hopefully that’ll change as my schedule lightens up a bit later this summer.

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  6. Greg on June 25, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    Lately I find that I am able to get work done at the Graduate Center library, as aggressively institutional as it is. I do sometimes run into a problem though… when somebody starts to snore in one of the comfy chairs. What does one do in that situation? Make a loud-ish sound in the hopes that the person might wake up? Kick the person’s chair (my annoyance in this situation is almost always way out of proportion)? Gently tap the person’s shoulder or knee? Or maybe tape a note to their arm? What would the note say? A normal person would, I suppose, just move to another corner of the library. Or put on headphones. Argh, the injustice of it all. This would never happen at Secret Amazing.

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  7. smalinky on July 3, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    Snoring is definitely a problem, though I can’t begrudge them the sleep. Something about libraries, the sleep is so sweet! I got the best sleep of my college career in the library, where I’d curl into a ball underneath my carrel and pass out for hours at a time. (Sidenote: I had a private study carrel in college; only the Grad Center could make the resources of my under-funded public liberal arts college seem impressive.) One day I got to my carrel, ready to work (sleep) to discover that some friends had a made a tiny doggy bed for me under my carrel out of a folded-over sleeping bag, topped off with a pillow. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for that doggy bed, tucked under a pile of books and papers, on one of my recent insomnia-plagued nights.

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