I want what they have ...
Welcome back to #EmerilHive, a weeklyish newsletter by Becca Thimmesch.
I’m doing that thing I do once every other year or so where I go from latent Seinfeld watching to manifest Seinfeld watching.
I’ve seen Seinfeld numerous times, but it’s really only on this latest rewatch that I find myself mired in jealousy about the coffee shop.
I think it’s because I’m (almost) 26 and not 11, but I can’t stop thinking about how nice it would be to have a place where me and all my friends could go at pretty much any time and have a little snack.
The coffee shop, for those unfamiliar, is one of those diner-ish places where you can get a reasonable meal at any time of day or you can just sit in a booth and drink cups of black coffee. Of course the main characters wind up there constantly, whether intentionally meeting each other or just assuming that someone else will be there. Everyone in their social circle seems to stop in occasionally, but not so much as to imply any sort of equal footing. They bring hundreds of dates through and it’s almost never awkward.
Despite having never seen Cheers, I do in fact want to go somewhere where everyone knows my name. I think everyone does, at least sometimes.
Being a regular is this sort of aspirational thing.
It’s something you envision in those early days of a new apartment, neighborhood or city. Wouldn’t it be nice if we became regulars here? You ask about a coffee shop or a little bar or a weeknight restaurant. And it would be nice.
I’ve been a regular, or regularish, at a fair number of places. Like any good North-Central Phoenix resident, I was a frequent flier at Postino, the perennial favorite wine bar that brought a touch of Scottsdale fancy to the more pedestrian Central Avenue. But we were regulars in the sense that almost everyone we knew were regulars. Servers may have recognized us but we were merely blurred faces in the nightly weeds. But it was one of those places where you could run into anyone and everyone, where little bits of gossip like so-and-so’s parents getting wasted and biking home in the dark got picked up and passed around. But my ability to embrace regulardom was drastically limited by the fact that I was, at a fundamental level, twelve years old.
In high school I developed a few regular haunts, only buttressed by the ability to drive. I was a bonafide regular at Pho Royal, the fluorescent Vietnamese cafe in the strip mall next to my school, occupying a booth two or three times a week to eat pho and do homework. But this was certainly not an Elaine Benes situation. There was no Jerry or Kramer or even George for me to happen upon or be joined by. I was alone, so much so that if I came in to eat with family the waiters would do a sort of hokey fake gasp and say, “wow, you brought someone!”
I love eating alone, but that might have been bad for my psyche.
On another day of the week, I functioned as a sort of add-on to someone else’s Seinfeld vibe at the Thai restaurant one additional strip mall away from our campus. I was a late joiner to an established regular visit, the person who made a perfect four-top into an awkward pentagonal table setting. It was short-lived.
It’s odd, upon reflection, to be humbled out of your main character syndrome, even if just briefly. To be the Bryan Cranston guest appearance in someone else’s coffee shop.
But once I got my high school diploma and eventually a college one too, regulardom still didn’t come as easily as I had hoped it might.
When I was 18 I was a Tryst regular but like again, who wasn’t? I dined enough at Mi Cuba Cafe that servers began pre-empting my sauce requests, and upon reflection this may be the closest I’ve ever gotten to having a regular vibe. I had several frequent coffee stops, but none that I could get off the ground as a group destination.
I was one of those kids obsessed with being an adult. But like, for the minutiae of it all. I wanted to be 30—not flirty and thriving, necessarily—but with matching throw pillows and a collection of serve ware. And believe me, I got the throw pillows. But some of the more nebulous aspects of my idealized adulthood continue to elude.
I think, perhaps, we’re a little too atomized for everyone to have their own Seinfeld vibe. The sit-down coffee shop, at least in major cities, is falling by the wayside. Proprietors seem to be doing all in their power to ask us not to linger, lest someone experiencing homelessness take advantage. You don’t see the Gilmore Girls asking for the bathroom code, et cetera.
Maybe such an easy-going establishment can only really survive in a place that doesn’t have any Deloitte offices these days. Every week it seems a different independent café or coffee shop I know is closing or telling me that their building got sold or their rent was raised beyond the realm of possibility. Maybe the model of “a nice place for people to hang out” isn’t profitable. Or maybe it only is if you squeeze your employees so hard they have to make a whole Instagram about it (I’m looking at you, Tryst).
As I am now Englandpilled, it’s tempting to view the pub as a sort of solution to my problem. And yes, I am a somewhat regular at the pub by my house, as well as the pub by the rugby field. It’s fine! But regulardom takes on a different feel when it’s centered around alcohol. There’s people who regularly attend a pub and then there’s like, pub people. No thank you!
I just want a sort of standard place where I can meet up with my friends and have a nice time. Is that so wrong? I’m curious, and I’d really like to hear from you my dear readers. Do you have a local? Do you want a local? Where do you go when you’re hungry or you need a coffee and you’d really just like to sit down? Please let me know.
Emeril Update
He evaded me, folks. I have a job! I couldn’t go parading around West London all day hoping for a chance encounter. It was raining!