If only I could've heard some Tom Waits

Coffee shop culture has always intrigued me because they are public spaces where people can have very private moments. I look around me at Spyhouse on Nicollet and wonder what’s going on in the hearts and minds of the 15 or so people who are sitting alone or in groups of two, working away on some project or another. The thing I like most about this coffee shop is the wide range of seating options. Surrounded on two sides by floor-to-ceiling windows that bring inside the emotions of the day’s weather, each customer can find a seating option that suits his or her particular needs.

When you enter the door, you are first confronted with a disparate yet somehow cohesive array of tables, chairs and stools. Typical ‘50s-era, metal-rimmed Formica tables offer standard leather and metal café chairs. If you keep walking along the wall of windows, you may choose a couch or sit on one of a variety of leather chairs, some of which remind me of the mid-20th Century furniture exhibit currently at the MIA. While the décor could be distracting, for some reason, it’s not. Paintings, album covers and bric-a-brac line the walls, but I never really noticed them until I began to write this piece.

My second-favorite thing about Spyhouse is the lighting. Glass lamps of various colors, shapes and sizes hang down from the ceiling. They glow dully, but they demand your attention … maybe because they’re hung at odd intervals. Upon close inspection, I realize it’s because there are only so many electrical outlets available for use in this old building’s ceiling.

Per usual at this particular establishment, there are laptops open on nearly every possible surface, ranging from booths like the one I’m sitting in, to coffee tables, the counter that stretches around the coffee bar, or even actual laps. Plugged in and tuned out to their surroundings, customers here seem to be lost in their own worlds, peering intently at the glowing screens in front of them … barely aware of the eclectic mix of music playing loudly over the shop’s speakers.

Syphouse attracts a standard, “I’m artistic … I go to MCAD, or I’m an individual … look at my tats” type of crowd. This is a neighborhood coffee shop, and one of the things I’ve noticed since moving here is that the people I see are trying so hard to be different that they kind of all look the same. I’m told this is the first evidence that I’m officially crossing the chasm from young to old. I used to be one of these coffee shop junkies, and in my day, I exerted a lot of effort in expressing my individualism … like that six-month period when I firmly believed my burgundy colored hair was a “fuck you” statement to authority. Of course, all it really took was for my grandfather to tell me I looked stupid for me to go back to the hairdresser and ask her to fix it.

But, back to the Spyhouse. There is a young couple in the corner, snuggled in each other’s arms on one side of a cozy booth. Their laptops are open on the opposite side of the table. Perhaps a break from studying or illustrating or writing or surfing the web? They are lost in each other, and it’s kind of sweet to surreptitiously spy on what appears to be blossoming love.

They guy across the aisle from me is furiously typing, and it looks like he’s copying directly from a rather large textbook. While he’s lost in whatever is playing from the earplugs he has attached to his laptop, I wonder what he’s up to … That’s the thing about the coffee shop experience. If you love people watching, like I do, you could waste away days of your life, making up wonderful and weird stories as people come and go.