Bronzeville Coffee House

When I lived in Kenwood, I picked up a flier for the Bronzeville Coffee House. The picture looked nice, and I was intrigued. When Timeout Chicago neglected to include the Coffee House--or any coffee shop in the (non-Hyde Park) South Side--I thought I'd find out for myself what it was like.

So, after taking the 55 westbound and the 3 northbound, and walking two or three blocks toward the lake, I found myself in a clean and cheerful establishment that really looks like it should switch locations with Third World Cafe. (Seriously, Third World's bleak industrial decor would be better suited to the part of Bronzeville where the Coffee House sits: a stretch of weed-choked vacant lots, abandoned buildings, and the ever-beautiful El track.) At the Bronzeville Coffee Shop, the hardwood floor shines, the walls are a happy yellow, and the seventies funk music doesn't blare out of the sound system (again, I'm looking at you, Third World). There were a couple of love seats, so I parked myself in one and had two cups of tea and a danish while I finished The Mysteries of Udolpho. The afternoon was pleasant.

The selection of pastries was limited, but the danish I had was moist and yummy. I had two cups of tea (I don't drink coffee anymore--at least not habitually. That subject merits another post.). The second was yerba mate, with honey. I had never had yerba mate before, but based on that experience, I would say that it is my favorite tea, along with Lady Grey. So sweet and rich! Yerba is a Spanish word for grass, and the tea itself comes from South America. It figures that I would like it--broadly speaking, I love foods from Latin America. If I could find a cafe that served cafe de la olla, I would be there every day.

The chiefest disadvantage this place has is its location. It's a trek for Hyde Parkers, and when I was walking there, I rebuffed the advances of a man on the street. He responded by yelling anti-woman and anti-Caucasian sentiments to anyone that could hear. Also, when I walked in, the entire staff stopped what they were doing and stared at me for a second. I wondered if it was because they were that unused to white customers, or because they were that unused to customers, period--the patronage was sparse. For what it's worth, the staff was nice to me after they overcame their initial shock. I think I'll drop by to spend a few hours there sometime when I feel like a change of scenery.

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Going Broke

Electronic Application fees for ten schools: $600
Sending supporting application materials via express mail: $150
Sending GRE scores to said schools by phone request, plus ETS service fee: $156
Sending last-minute Interfolio recommendations via overnight express mail to meet app deadline: $250
But hey, at least twenty years from now I'll be making the big bucks as an academic. Humanities people make so much money.

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South Side Pride and the Hunt for Hidden Treasure

Recently I've been exploring the area south of Hyde Park, looking for places to get used clothes. The neighborhood I've been visiting is South Shore, close to where I work. In general it's not a flashy neighborhood--parts of it are getting gentrified with those new apartments with impossibly straight edges, but those are mostly at areas close to Lake Shore Drive, where folks can get straight on the expressway and go to their jobs downtown. The rest of the area is pretty modest, and the thrift stores are actually thrifty--no garish, overpriced vintage collection marketed for hipsters. Here's what I found:

YKnot Repeats at 7631 S. Jeffery (you can take the 15 or the 6, southbound) is cute and well-maintained, with the clothes carefully arranged, and a couple neat dressing rooms. The stuff is not supercheap, at least not by Unique Boutique standards, and most of the pieces are the kind of clothes I've seen middle-aged African-American women wear. Before you roll your eyes at my generalization, picture what I'm describing: L, XL, or XXL blouses with ethnic prints, and matching trousers worn underneath, and fancy hats to wear to church. Leaving aside the cultural differences--I wear "ethnic" clothes too--that stuff is still too big and too old for me. Still, I was able to find a few Banana Republic camisole in my size for five or ten dollars each, so for me that place is worth revisiting.

Caring Closet on 1745 E. 71st (take the 28 or X28 southbound to 71st, walk a couple blocks toward the lake) is a different animal. It took me a couple visits to get in--they're only open on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays--and when I got in, a woman there told me that the owner was out, and that no one would be available to ring me up on the register. I stayed anyway and picked through the stuff; some of the clothes are hanging on racks, but there are waist-high piles of stuff everywhere on the floor, so i took off my Doc Martens to climb through it all. After literally digging through piles of clothes, I found four neck ties, a nice button-down shirt, a skirt, and cropped blazer, all for a grand total of $11. The woman there was nice and agreed to take my money even though the register was off-limits, and she had a hard time mentally calculating change for $11 from a $20 bill. Still, if you're into cheap stuff and you like to dig, I'd recommend it. Just seeing the piles of stuff is an experience, an experience you can have only on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

On my busride down to these places, I noticed a Moo&Oink and a Save-A-Lot that said "open 24 hours" on 71st and Stony Island. True to its name, Moo&Oink sells a lot of meat, though when I walked in it smelled as if a lot of it had gone bad. Still, the dried goods are cheap, and I got a loaf of bread for a dollar. The sales items are marked down even more, so you can get a $2 box of tea for $1, stuff like that. When I lived in west Hyde Park, I used to trudge up to the Save-A-Lot on 47th and spend $25 on groceries that would have cost me $60 at one of the local Co-Ops. That location was inconvenient--too far for a leisurely stroll, but too close to think about waiting for the 4, paying fare, etc.--but I felt the time and effort spent was worth it. I like the idea of the Save-a-Lot on 71st even more because I can hop on a bus that's close to my home and sit on my butt until I arrive there--much more convenient. If I go every week or every two weeks, I can stock up and spend less than half what I would if I shopped at the 55th street Co-Op that's next to my building. So no, the "opportunity cost" does not outweigh the savings. Take that, Microecon 198!

Update: I think it goes without saying that YKnot is the kind of place that takes credit cards, and Caring Closet is the kind that does not. But in case that wasn't obvious, I've just said it anyway. So there.

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I am 23.

Yes, I am old. People ten years younger than I have won gold medals. What do I have to show for myself? About as much as anyone else. Lengthier posts to come later, peeps.

Peace.

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Before Borat, there was the Hammer.

Shabat Shalom, Muthafucka.

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By Google's Reckoning, I'm a Raging Success (Blogophilia)

I was skimming through Jossip, and the latter blog linked to an NYTimes article that said that, according to Google, "the average blog has one reader." Mander's Musings, on the other hand, has, at minimum, THREE readers other than myself. Three hundred percent times the average! Break out the party hats!

I started this blog as a way to get my opinions and observations written down--it was my ex's suggestion, and I think that was the one constructive thing he had to say during our year together. My posts aren't always polished, but in general I try to structure them like essays, so that, more than just engaging in vacuous, postmodern, adolescent ramblings of "self-expression," I put forth a valid argument on a given topic. Even when I do a long post on my personal life, I try to present it in a coherent narrative form, if only so I can better understand what's just happened to me. Hopefully my efforts at lucidity will pay off and I'll pick up a few more readers (here's going for ten!), but ultimately I think this blog is helpful to me because I get practice at writing and organizing my thoughts.

Apparently newspapers and other print publications are freaking out becuase blogs are hurting their circulation, and because blogs are held to different journalistic standards. Even if the New York Times ditches its hardcopy edition ten years from now and goes completely online, it will still be an online newspaper, not a blog. Their "blogs" are not like blogs in the same sense, as they tend to post only the kinds of material that the Times deems fit to publish; they don't do the usual blurring of the lines between "hard news" reporting and personal perspective that you find on media blogs. Bloggers have considerably more freedom when it comes to what to write.

Don't shoot me for sounding snooty, but, I think that blogging may constitute the re-emergence of the generalist in our intellectual culture. One of my favorite bloggers is Rich Juzwiak from Fourfour, and he writes on whatever he damn well wants to write about--pop music, horror movies, campy television shows. He writes about those subjects because they are his passions, and becuase they are such, he goes to the trouble to know what he's talking about before he posts his opinion. As a result, his entries are well-written and throught-provoking, even if his qualifications do not come handed down from some formal institution. Intelligent blogs such as his are redefining the notion of expertise, and allowing for individuals to express themselves on any topic that captures their interest.

Blogs allow people to express different parts of themselves, rather than sticking to one talent or area of expertise. Perhaps, then, blogs are moving culture away from the trend of increased specialization that has overtaken our industry and academy. Or, perhaps, after years of splintering bases of knowledge into more specific areas of expertise, we've gotten to a point where each person has his own unique area of expertise, and the idea of grouping experts is obsolete. Or, perhaps, I'm full of it. I'm still curious to see what blogs do to our culture ten years from now. Aren't you?

Thanks for reading.

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