I was going to miss you, dear reader, most of all about Kalamazoo. But then I realized that a.) not everyone who reads this blog is from/in Kalamazoo, b.) I haven't really lost you the same way I've lost Martini's antipasto salad, and c.) acknowledging how much I'll miss you sets up this precedent that you won't come visit, call, etc. vs. the precedent that you will come visit, call, etc, which I prefer to believe. So instead, I've decided to go the self-pitying route of bemoaning the loss of my twenties.
There's a magic to being twenty-something. Old enough to know better, young enough not to care too much yet about the consequences. Finally, enough expendable income to do some of what you want to do, yet your desires generally possess a certain modesty of scope that makes them at least somewhat attainable. Friends so close they feel like family, always ready for anything that smacks of an adventure. The kind of friends you can call in the middle of the night with the certainty that they will still be awake, and if they aren't, will think nothing of the fact that you're calling at such an ungodly hour. The interest people show in you as a young woman about to make up her mind to do...something, and maybe even something grand.
I could have lived out my twenties anywhere, and it probably would have been the same magical, transforming time no matter where I lived. I would have loved, been hurt, hurt back, learned, grown, laughed, embraced and been embraced, rejected and been rejected, failed and succeeded and dared the same way in some other town. It just so happens that I did it in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Kalamazoo will be forever the place I associate with that sweet and painful stage in my process of becoming.
It's probably good that I left when I did, because my twenties are over. If I'd stuck around, I might have tried to prolong them long after I was relevant. I'd be that sad, old person at the hip twenty-something party. I'd pass, for a while, but I'd know and soon other people would start figuring it out too, see me dancing to their music, drinking their booze, laughing at their jokes, and they'd ask "dude, don't you have better things to do with your life?" (which, they hope against hope, is a reasonable assumption, because they don't want to consider that they have seen their future and their future is me). I'd be oblivious to the fact that I was an anacronism, like those sit-com actors from the seventies who come back and do infomercials. Like those bands who get a new lead singer and try to pass themselves off as the same band.
Nope. It's time to sing a new song.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
#2: Asylum Woods and Kleinstuck
Sorely lacking in my new digs is any kind of wooded place where I can let the hound meander. One of the things I love about Kalamazoo is the abundance of places where you can escape the strip malls and concrete and be completely surrounded by nature, yet without having to drive an hour to get there. Heck, without having to drive at all. Technically, you're not supposed to have your dog off-leash at either of these places. But there seems to be a tacit understanding among dog owners that sometimes those critters just need to be at large, and 90% of the non-dog-having crowd out there on the trails seems to acquiesce*.
Kleinstuck, behind the YWCA on Maple Street, is a 3/4 mile loop (plus some other trails) that surrounds a bog, and thanks to the recent efforts of local volunteers it is being reclaimed from invasive species. The vines that were swarming the trees have been cut back so you can see the swamp, which hosts noisy frog parties in the evenings. A sweet, sun-baked, heady resiny fragrance emanates from the pine grove on one stretch of the trail, particularly in the afternoon. On a hot summer day, it's always about five degrees cooler back under the shade of those gnarled old trees.
Asylum is -- well, to be honest I don't know what it used to be, other than that whatever it was is being steadily reclaimed by nature. A network of cement roads crisscrosses the preserve, all of them infiltrated by persistent roots and weeds that shove themselves unceremoniously up through the cracks. There's a lake and a stream and a swamp and glades and woods and a huge field that brims with ticks and wildflowers in the summer. There's a tree that juts out over one of the fields just like the prow of a ship, and this has long been my favorite place to watch -- and feel -- the seasons change.
The hound loves it all. These are his places to socialize. I love to watch him lose himself in the tall grass and make these clumsy, dolphin-like leaps over the heads of the Queen Anne's Lace to get his bearings, or lose some doggie friend by dodging and weaving between the trees, wherever his low center of gravity will take him. We met Molly, a compact and energetic black lab mix, and her dad. There was the snarky Pabliano, a beagle, and his verbose mom who always wanted to engage me in conversation while her dog bared his teeth at my oh-so-sociable hound. Then there was the lady with the long, wavy grey hair and crooked teeth whose golden retriever would take you out at the knees out of sheer exuberance.
What makes these places so special is that they're such an unexpected sanctum, which means that there may well be some similar place down here that we have yet to discover. Still, I'm already nostalgic for the cool tinge that the end of August brings in my home state, and I miss my near-daily walk in the woods.
* people have been ticketed in the past for walking pets off-leash in Asylum Woods. Do so at your own risk.
Kleinstuck, behind the YWCA on Maple Street, is a 3/4 mile loop (plus some other trails) that surrounds a bog, and thanks to the recent efforts of local volunteers it is being reclaimed from invasive species. The vines that were swarming the trees have been cut back so you can see the swamp, which hosts noisy frog parties in the evenings. A sweet, sun-baked, heady resiny fragrance emanates from the pine grove on one stretch of the trail, particularly in the afternoon. On a hot summer day, it's always about five degrees cooler back under the shade of those gnarled old trees.
Asylum is -- well, to be honest I don't know what it used to be, other than that whatever it was is being steadily reclaimed by nature. A network of cement roads crisscrosses the preserve, all of them infiltrated by persistent roots and weeds that shove themselves unceremoniously up through the cracks. There's a lake and a stream and a swamp and glades and woods and a huge field that brims with ticks and wildflowers in the summer. There's a tree that juts out over one of the fields just like the prow of a ship, and this has long been my favorite place to watch -- and feel -- the seasons change.
The hound loves it all. These are his places to socialize. I love to watch him lose himself in the tall grass and make these clumsy, dolphin-like leaps over the heads of the Queen Anne's Lace to get his bearings, or lose some doggie friend by dodging and weaving between the trees, wherever his low center of gravity will take him. We met Molly, a compact and energetic black lab mix, and her dad. There was the snarky Pabliano, a beagle, and his verbose mom who always wanted to engage me in conversation while her dog bared his teeth at my oh-so-sociable hound. Then there was the lady with the long, wavy grey hair and crooked teeth whose golden retriever would take you out at the knees out of sheer exuberance.
What makes these places so special is that they're such an unexpected sanctum, which means that there may well be some similar place down here that we have yet to discover. Still, I'm already nostalgic for the cool tinge that the end of August brings in my home state, and I miss my near-daily walk in the woods.
* people have been ticketed in the past for walking pets off-leash in Asylum Woods. Do so at your own risk.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
#3: Martini's antipasto salad
Not long ago the neighbs pointed out to me that I don't have favorite restaurants. I have favorite dishes that one has to go to certain restaurants to get, and my taste in restaurants follows from this "if it ain't broke don't fix it, I'll have the usual" ordering strategy. Although nothing I have ever ordered at Martini's has disappointed me and, yes, I enjoy the atmosphere there and, yes, it was very convenient walking distance from my last several apartments, this salad deserves its own entry in the ever-increasingly ill-named Kalamazoo countdown to my departure.
I love a good antipasto salad and this one is the best I have ever tasted. It's not like at some places where you get lettuce lettuce lettuce, lump of red onion over here, lump of tomatoes over there, rolled up cold cuts on top of here, a couple olives and a token banana pepper. At Martini's, there's no assembly required. It's all jumbled together and tossed in a vinaigrette that is just vinegary enough, just oily enough and just herby enough.
They don't chintz out on the lettuce. It always has enough of its own flavor and it's chopped down to about the same size as everything else so you can get everything in every bite. Same goes for tomatoes, cucumbers, meats, cheeses, black olives and banana pepper rings. They make it on the spot in a big stainless bowl and serve it with a healthy hunk of crusty bread. Order one right now and you can pick it up in ten minutes.
I have tried, dear reader, to replicate results on my own. I've used the same ingredients and even come close to the dressing, but my efforts still somehow pale in comparison. For now, my quest for the consummate antipasto salad of my new home town continues.
I love a good antipasto salad and this one is the best I have ever tasted. It's not like at some places where you get lettuce lettuce lettuce, lump of red onion over here, lump of tomatoes over there, rolled up cold cuts on top of here, a couple olives and a token banana pepper. At Martini's, there's no assembly required. It's all jumbled together and tossed in a vinaigrette that is just vinegary enough, just oily enough and just herby enough.
They don't chintz out on the lettuce. It always has enough of its own flavor and it's chopped down to about the same size as everything else so you can get everything in every bite. Same goes for tomatoes, cucumbers, meats, cheeses, black olives and banana pepper rings. They make it on the spot in a big stainless bowl and serve it with a healthy hunk of crusty bread. Order one right now and you can pick it up in ten minutes.
I have tried, dear reader, to replicate results on my own. I've used the same ingredients and even come close to the dressing, but my efforts still somehow pale in comparison. For now, my quest for the consummate antipasto salad of my new home town continues.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
#4: the Vine neighborhood in the summertime
Just last night the neighbs and I took the hound for a walk around his new digs. We walked down to the river and sat a while, then we walked under the spreading trees through the elegantly-landscaped and cobbled median of our favorite boulevard, then past all the old apartment buildings and craftsman homes back to our yellow stucco with the big slice of window. It was dark and still hottish warm outside, some of my favorite weather, and we bumped into several friendly people and their (mostly)friendly dogs.
I'm not telling you this, dear reader, to gloat about how awesome my new neighborhood is. Okay, so maybe I am, a little. I still feel like a kid on Christmas morning the year she unwrapped her first-ever bicycle. I can't believe this place belongs to me...at least for a year. But the thing is, I'll still miss the Vine neighborhood in the summertime. After all, I've lived there on and off for the last eleven years, and it's a pretty charming place (I'll leave out the condescending "in its own way" out of love and respect for my long-time home).
A substantial part of what I love about my new place is how new it feels. It reminds me of being nineteen and moving into a place on Oak Street, the first place that felt like my own. I'm washing my dishes in my sink. I can entertain people in my living room. It didn't matter that it was shared, because she was my roommate, my consciously chosen companion whom neither genetics nor university bureaucracy had compelled to string along with me.
Upstairs at Oak Street was only the beginning, though. For example, later would come downstairs at Oak Street. To this day, when I walk by that old place I am taken aback at how huge the tree in front of the house has become. There's nothing to make you feel older like discovering how much a tree has grown. After Oak Street came some time in other neighborhoods, but then it was back to Merrill, then on to Pioneer, and finally Park Place.
I love biking around Vine on summer evenings. I love how all the houses are glorious and dilapidated, how the elderly live side by side with obnoxious college students. I love seeing people's gardening and their dogs on tie-outs and behind fences. I love how, the first truly warm day (or even before, if the winter has been a bad one), the streets fill up with kids playing frisbee in their flip-flops.
I love having a number of friends who live within walking distance of my place, and knowing that when they move it'll probably be within a three-block radius. I love that, when I walk down a number of streets in the neighborhood, I know what the houses look like on the inside because that's where so-and-so used to live. Although, here's a funny something: I lost a house. About three years ago I was driving home really late one night and my eyes came to rest on a house on Wheaton and I knew with entire certainty that that was the house where I had first hung out with my long-time boyfriend. The next morning I couldn't have told you which one it was, and to this day I have no idea, despite the fact that I have scrutinized every house on Wheaton every day for the past two years on my way home from school trying to remember.
It isn't a perfect neighborhood, it has traffic and junkies and trash and creepy people, but I'll miss it for more reasons than just the familiarity. I remember one afternoon -- it was getting on towards fall, I guess -- a family on Oak between Vine and Walnut had pulled some old mattresses out to the curb for bulk trash day, and three or four little kids were jumping up and down on the mattresses out by the curb, with the leaves just turning bright colors and beginning to fall, one late afternoon and the light was so yellow, and I remember that moment just as if it was preserved in that liquid amber just slanting through the treetops.
Yeah, like that.
I'm not telling you this, dear reader, to gloat about how awesome my new neighborhood is. Okay, so maybe I am, a little. I still feel like a kid on Christmas morning the year she unwrapped her first-ever bicycle. I can't believe this place belongs to me...at least for a year. But the thing is, I'll still miss the Vine neighborhood in the summertime. After all, I've lived there on and off for the last eleven years, and it's a pretty charming place (I'll leave out the condescending "in its own way" out of love and respect for my long-time home).
A substantial part of what I love about my new place is how new it feels. It reminds me of being nineteen and moving into a place on Oak Street, the first place that felt like my own. I'm washing my dishes in my sink. I can entertain people in my living room. It didn't matter that it was shared, because she was my roommate, my consciously chosen companion whom neither genetics nor university bureaucracy had compelled to string along with me.
Upstairs at Oak Street was only the beginning, though. For example, later would come downstairs at Oak Street. To this day, when I walk by that old place I am taken aback at how huge the tree in front of the house has become. There's nothing to make you feel older like discovering how much a tree has grown. After Oak Street came some time in other neighborhoods, but then it was back to Merrill, then on to Pioneer, and finally Park Place.
I love biking around Vine on summer evenings. I love how all the houses are glorious and dilapidated, how the elderly live side by side with obnoxious college students. I love seeing people's gardening and their dogs on tie-outs and behind fences. I love how, the first truly warm day (or even before, if the winter has been a bad one), the streets fill up with kids playing frisbee in their flip-flops.
I love having a number of friends who live within walking distance of my place, and knowing that when they move it'll probably be within a three-block radius. I love that, when I walk down a number of streets in the neighborhood, I know what the houses look like on the inside because that's where so-and-so used to live. Although, here's a funny something: I lost a house. About three years ago I was driving home really late one night and my eyes came to rest on a house on Wheaton and I knew with entire certainty that that was the house where I had first hung out with my long-time boyfriend. The next morning I couldn't have told you which one it was, and to this day I have no idea, despite the fact that I have scrutinized every house on Wheaton every day for the past two years on my way home from school trying to remember.
It isn't a perfect neighborhood, it has traffic and junkies and trash and creepy people, but I'll miss it for more reasons than just the familiarity. I remember one afternoon -- it was getting on towards fall, I guess -- a family on Oak between Vine and Walnut had pulled some old mattresses out to the curb for bulk trash day, and three or four little kids were jumping up and down on the mattresses out by the curb, with the leaves just turning bright colors and beginning to fall, one late afternoon and the light was so yellow, and I remember that moment just as if it was preserved in that liquid amber just slanting through the treetops.
Yeah, like that.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
#5: the Farmer's Market
Well, I'm here in Ghent, the neighborhood in Norfolk where I'm destined to live for the next year, or perhaps for the rest of my life to judge by how much I love it so far. The grocery store is about a block and a half away, and the produce section has gooseberries for only $2.99 (thank goodness! Just imagine if gooseberries were not in abundant supply!). They call their produce section "The Farmers Market", which has sent me scampering back to the keyboard to finish my countdown.
I am confident that in a neighborhood like this one I will eventually find a farmer's market of some worth. And I can't say that I went to Kalamazoo's Bank St. Market as often as I thought about going, nor nearly as often as I should have. But there are aspects of the Farmer's Market in Kalamazoo that I can confidently say I'll miss. What makes it unique, of course, is that it's been my farmer's market. I know which vendors I like to buy from and where to buy what, and I can typically count on bumping into three or four people I know and don't often see over the course of a Saturday morning's transactions.
This may all sound like laziness about getting to know new places and meeting new people, but it's not. I see the Farmer's Market I've been enjoying (too seldom) for the past number of years as emblematic of so many things that make the North American Midwest special. First of all, it's a place where you can enjoy the sheer bountifulness of the place: in spring, the new potatoes and early peas; summer blueberries, strawberries and sweet corn; in fall, the concord grapes, squash and apples. You can watch the seasons change not only in the products for sale, but in the humidity or crispness of the air, the fogginess or the clarity of the late-morning light. You can take your time and greet your neighbor, stand outside and drink in the fact that it isn't cold (anymore or yet). Its sublimity resides in its simplicity.
On the east coast, midwesterners have a reputation for being simple, plain folks. Yet, how often have you seen a bar on the shores of Lake Michigan cluttered with potted palms and Hawaiian-shirt uniforms, trying to pass itself off as Caribbean? Remember the restaurant recently opened in a prominent downtown hotel that touts itself as a "New-York-style bistro"? Why do we midwesterners struggle so hard to pretend to be something we're not? Even we are forgetting how wonderful and fulfilling our own simple, sublime place in the world can feel on a brisk, late-August Saturday morning.
I am confident that in a neighborhood like this one I will eventually find a farmer's market of some worth. And I can't say that I went to Kalamazoo's Bank St. Market as often as I thought about going, nor nearly as often as I should have. But there are aspects of the Farmer's Market in Kalamazoo that I can confidently say I'll miss. What makes it unique, of course, is that it's been my farmer's market. I know which vendors I like to buy from and where to buy what, and I can typically count on bumping into three or four people I know and don't often see over the course of a Saturday morning's transactions.
This may all sound like laziness about getting to know new places and meeting new people, but it's not. I see the Farmer's Market I've been enjoying (too seldom) for the past number of years as emblematic of so many things that make the North American Midwest special. First of all, it's a place where you can enjoy the sheer bountifulness of the place: in spring, the new potatoes and early peas; summer blueberries, strawberries and sweet corn; in fall, the concord grapes, squash and apples. You can watch the seasons change not only in the products for sale, but in the humidity or crispness of the air, the fogginess or the clarity of the late-morning light. You can take your time and greet your neighbor, stand outside and drink in the fact that it isn't cold (anymore or yet). Its sublimity resides in its simplicity.
On the east coast, midwesterners have a reputation for being simple, plain folks. Yet, how often have you seen a bar on the shores of Lake Michigan cluttered with potted palms and Hawaiian-shirt uniforms, trying to pass itself off as Caribbean? Remember the restaurant recently opened in a prominent downtown hotel that touts itself as a "New-York-style bistro"? Why do we midwesterners struggle so hard to pretend to be something we're not? Even we are forgetting how wonderful and fulfilling our own simple, sublime place in the world can feel on a brisk, late-August Saturday morning.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
#6: The Heritage Company
Now that I have an apartment – roughly twice the size of my current one – that I must outfit, I foresee really missing the Heritage Company. I’m hoping to find a similar outpost in Norfolk, but it’s hard to imagine that any place will be able to capture the unique and musty chutzpah of Kalamazoo’s premier architectural salvage shop.
I could spend – indeed, have spent – hours poking around in the Heritage Company; imagining fixing up this, repurposing that, letting the other just continue to rust gracefully to bits in some corner of my home. I love the chaos in there, seeing old shutters haphazardly propped up on claw-footed bathtubs filled with corroded iron egg baskets, or test tubes rescued from some moldering factory displayed on the shelves dragged out of an old hotel laundry. I love seeing where the 1930’s theater marquee ends up as downtowns all over the place become more gentrified one storefront at a time, love imagining how I might incorporate it into my design if I were, say, opening a restaurant or in need of a new headboard.
I love how just heaping it all up in three dusty, adjacent rooms is at the same time a completely unpretentious and totally reverent act. Everything at the Heritage Company is casually present: you are welcome to rifle through whatever you want, nothing is being promoted. There’s never this hackneyed sense of “our merchandise is very special. We, the civic-minded experts, took the pains to pull it out of someone's basement, so you can pay a premium for it." Nonetheless, everything that is for sale there is heavy with history and intentionality; seldom immaculate, yet most always perfect. There is beauty in each hinge, screw and scrape, and if you can’t see it, then you’re looking at it wrong. This probably explains the dismissive “You want cheap and serviceable? Go to Home Depot” you get from the staff until you become a familiar face.
The prices can be off-putting at first glance, but they seldom stick. I don’t think I’ve ever paid the sticker price for anything at the Heritage Company (except for a Fiesta ware butter dish…the Fiesta ware is non-negotiable). Nor have I ever had to barter. I’d just bring something to the ancient cash register, prepared to pay the asking price, and the guy behind the counter would go, “meh, gimme twenty bucks for it” and that was that.
I love coming home with my new-old light fixture, or ammunition box, or library card-catalog cabinet, and envisioning the semi-local place it came out of. My mom used to say that seeing old, dilapidated houses slowly crumbling made her sad, thinking of what might have become of the families that once scrubbed the floors shiny, of the bride carried over the threshold on the first day of a fresh life, of the children pounding up the staircases. There must have been such snug promise in those houses before they fell into neglect and disrepair. Thanks to the Heritage Company, there is promise in them again. Each time I push aside the three old screen doors that currently corral my wall of closet inserts into something vaguely resembling a closet, I’m glad Idea triumphed over Ikea and that I put those guys back to work. If I have to jiggle the occasional handle, it’s only because I’m speaking the language of that ghost house, one that was maybe two doors down, maybe three blocks up.
I could spend – indeed, have spent – hours poking around in the Heritage Company; imagining fixing up this, repurposing that, letting the other just continue to rust gracefully to bits in some corner of my home. I love the chaos in there, seeing old shutters haphazardly propped up on claw-footed bathtubs filled with corroded iron egg baskets, or test tubes rescued from some moldering factory displayed on the shelves dragged out of an old hotel laundry. I love seeing where the 1930’s theater marquee ends up as downtowns all over the place become more gentrified one storefront at a time, love imagining how I might incorporate it into my design if I were, say, opening a restaurant or in need of a new headboard.
I love how just heaping it all up in three dusty, adjacent rooms is at the same time a completely unpretentious and totally reverent act. Everything at the Heritage Company is casually present: you are welcome to rifle through whatever you want, nothing is being promoted. There’s never this hackneyed sense of “our merchandise is very special. We, the civic-minded experts, took the pains to pull it out of someone's basement, so you can pay a premium for it." Nonetheless, everything that is for sale there is heavy with history and intentionality; seldom immaculate, yet most always perfect. There is beauty in each hinge, screw and scrape, and if you can’t see it, then you’re looking at it wrong. This probably explains the dismissive “You want cheap and serviceable? Go to Home Depot” you get from the staff until you become a familiar face.
The prices can be off-putting at first glance, but they seldom stick. I don’t think I’ve ever paid the sticker price for anything at the Heritage Company (except for a Fiesta ware butter dish…the Fiesta ware is non-negotiable). Nor have I ever had to barter. I’d just bring something to the ancient cash register, prepared to pay the asking price, and the guy behind the counter would go, “meh, gimme twenty bucks for it” and that was that.
I love coming home with my new-old light fixture, or ammunition box, or library card-catalog cabinet, and envisioning the semi-local place it came out of. My mom used to say that seeing old, dilapidated houses slowly crumbling made her sad, thinking of what might have become of the families that once scrubbed the floors shiny, of the bride carried over the threshold on the first day of a fresh life, of the children pounding up the staircases. There must have been such snug promise in those houses before they fell into neglect and disrepair. Thanks to the Heritage Company, there is promise in them again. Each time I push aside the three old screen doors that currently corral my wall of closet inserts into something vaguely resembling a closet, I’m glad Idea triumphed over Ikea and that I put those guys back to work. If I have to jiggle the occasional handle, it’s only because I’m speaking the language of that ghost house, one that was maybe two doors down, maybe three blocks up.
Monday, August 4, 2008
#7: bluegrass breakfast
The prospect of leaving the town where I've lived for twelve years feels a bit like dying, and I keep coming up with a few more things I want to experience one more time before I go. Beyond that, even, there are favorite haunts of mine that I wish to see pass into someone else's knowledge so that I know someone will be appreciating them after I leave (thereby selfishly ensuring their survival for when I come back to visit). One such happening is the Bluegrass Breakfast at the Cooper Café in Cooper Township, which lucky for me still happens every Wednesday and Saturday morning from about 9:30 to 11:30.
Yogi Berra once said something about a restaurant that was "so crowded nobody ever goes there anymore", which is how I felt about the Cooper Café for a while. In fact, I hadn't been there in so long that I was afraid the place wouldn't be doing the Bluegrass portion anymore, in which case I would have felt obligated to sit down and have the Breakfast anyway -- a sacrifice, since the service used to be abominable and the food insipid. Actually, our waitress was quite good last time. The food is still indifferent (unless you like monster cinnamon rolls, which I don't, although my friends tell me they're amazing by any standards), but the coffee's good and they keep it flowing.
It's hard to understand how such a mediocre dive out in the middle of nowhere becomes standing room only two days a week, until the Lonesome Moonlight Trio starts cranking out the bluegrass. There's a sad-eyed guy in a gray T-shirt named Pete, who plays guitar and sings in a gruff, hound-dog howl; the pale, pleasant, sandy-haired man who plays mandolin; and Abraham Lincoln Guy, who sings very sweetly in an unexpected tenor and used to play a Dobro he fashioned out of a metal washtub. They cover everybody from Wilco to Hank Williams (Sr., thank you very much), and sometimes a big guy who's name I believe is Dave accompanies them from his breakfast table on harmonica.
There's a toy choo-choo that runs around the top of the wood paneling around and around the restaurant, and the waitress with the tattoo circling her elbow will lift you up to pull the string on the train whistle if you're too little to reach it yourself. The coffee mugs are the heavy white kind printed with advertisements for local businesses. The crowd is an even split between elderly Cooperites and hip young audiophiles (and occasionally me and my friends, of course). They're not too uptight about you taking the seats closest to the band and nursing a cup of coffee for half an hour after you eat, but when the music starts and the place fills up, the tiny kitchen gets backed up with orders anyway so you can just enjoy the music while you wait for your food without feeling like you're depriving anyone of a table.
Still, if you're going to go, go on the early side of the music or you may have to wait for a table. When you get one, offer to share it with an old person or two. And make sure to take Old Douglas Avenue to get there (go by bicycle if you're feeling particularly adventurous) so you can take in one of the most scenic roads around Kalamazoo.
Do this some time, or I'll be haunting you next.
Yogi Berra once said something about a restaurant that was "so crowded nobody ever goes there anymore", which is how I felt about the Cooper Café for a while. In fact, I hadn't been there in so long that I was afraid the place wouldn't be doing the Bluegrass portion anymore, in which case I would have felt obligated to sit down and have the Breakfast anyway -- a sacrifice, since the service used to be abominable and the food insipid. Actually, our waitress was quite good last time. The food is still indifferent (unless you like monster cinnamon rolls, which I don't, although my friends tell me they're amazing by any standards), but the coffee's good and they keep it flowing.
It's hard to understand how such a mediocre dive out in the middle of nowhere becomes standing room only two days a week, until the Lonesome Moonlight Trio starts cranking out the bluegrass. There's a sad-eyed guy in a gray T-shirt named Pete, who plays guitar and sings in a gruff, hound-dog howl; the pale, pleasant, sandy-haired man who plays mandolin; and Abraham Lincoln Guy, who sings very sweetly in an unexpected tenor and used to play a Dobro he fashioned out of a metal washtub. They cover everybody from Wilco to Hank Williams (Sr., thank you very much), and sometimes a big guy who's name I believe is Dave accompanies them from his breakfast table on harmonica.
There's a toy choo-choo that runs around the top of the wood paneling around and around the restaurant, and the waitress with the tattoo circling her elbow will lift you up to pull the string on the train whistle if you're too little to reach it yourself. The coffee mugs are the heavy white kind printed with advertisements for local businesses. The crowd is an even split between elderly Cooperites and hip young audiophiles (and occasionally me and my friends, of course). They're not too uptight about you taking the seats closest to the band and nursing a cup of coffee for half an hour after you eat, but when the music starts and the place fills up, the tiny kitchen gets backed up with orders anyway so you can just enjoy the music while you wait for your food without feeling like you're depriving anyone of a table.
Still, if you're going to go, go on the early side of the music or you may have to wait for a table. When you get one, offer to share it with an old person or two. And make sure to take Old Douglas Avenue to get there (go by bicycle if you're feeling particularly adventurous) so you can take in one of the most scenic roads around Kalamazoo.
Do this some time, or I'll be haunting you next.
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