Two Successes and a Flop

I have returned to good health (and to school)! Spring break was mostly spent lying down and spending quality time with books. But the final weekend of spring break, I got out with my friend from Seattle and, while marauding, stopped in at a few interesting places to write. We stumbled upon, unfortunately, my first negative experience with a potential writing location, but I also got to two places that were quite delightful.

The flop, Faminelli’s, was a bar downtown that we stopped in at to try and get some quick eats while passing from clothing shop to clothing shop. The rooms were unclean, the food tasted off, we felt ripped off by the high prices for mediocre product. I couldn’t pull out my notebook for lack of space and they were generally ignorant of the customer’s needs. Alas, I will not return.

Veniero’s Cafe (a downtown dessert bar) was the first positive place that we flitted to. They had excellent, excellent desserts and cute little tables surrounded by mirrors. With notebook in hand, I sampled roasted almond gelato at a leisurely Italian pace and, between tastings, scribbled down some words. A great selection and a classy bustling environment really allowed me to ease into a relaxing place where I could write; on a busy day, there may be a little more rush to enjoy and move on, but I could see sitting down there for a few hours just chatting and writing.

This week, much closer to home, the 107th West Bar and Lounge was our prime location. It is a fairly unmarked restaurant in comparison to the Indian Cafe next door, but the food was a mix of American and Japanese (sushi and fried chicken in the same place? who would have thought!). While waiting for our repast, my friend and I sat on their comfy couch bench seats in the glass atrium and stared at the street bustling along past us. If you’re into people watching, this is a prime location. I put down some words on a spare scrap of stationary. No one rushed us, no one knocked our book-worm habits (we had spread out two books and were reading and writing as they fixed the vittles). It felt very relaxing and calm and the food was delicious.

As a side note, I have recently been reading Anna Quindlen’s book Thinking Out Loud, which is an anthology of her opinion column. Next time I am going to take a leaf out of Anna Quindlen’s book and write out some of the ideas that I’ve been scribbling while writing in strange places; rather than put them all together as a big thing later on, I figured that I would try writing very short pieces and see how it goes!

Read more of my writing in strange places reviews.
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