As I’m sitting in Lynnwood’s Cafe Ladro, enjoying the cafe vibe, memories are triggered. Thinking of my beloved B&O and bauhaus from the years I lived on Capitol Hill. The ambiance of an urban cafe is unique, and these two captured the emotion of that point of my life.
Now I find myself back in the suburbs that I’d reviled as a young man. Just a few meters from the house my parents settled in, where I consider myself “raised”. Coffee tastes similar, though my relationship to it has greatly changed. The grey skies and driving drizzle pull out similar ties to that time, yet they’re over strip malls not the lovely, gritty buildings of Seattle.
So, B&O moved, then went out of business. I heard bauhaus moved up the hill. Change. Change. Not just me, not just my locale, even the streets and institutions of my history evolve.
Or so I ruminate, listening coffee beans getting scooped. A sound hearkening to before my birth. Little pieces connecting all humanity over the ocean of time.