Coffee and Hipsters

Was it the beatniks that started the coffee shop hipster scene? With their morose poetry and finger snapping? Not sure who started it, but I am glad they did. Yesterday, I visited Crema in downtown Nashville. I made it past the honky tonk downtown area where all the tourists hang out without getting infected by their penchant for visors and black socks with their white tennis shoes. Crema looks like it is in a converted warehouse with a garage door at the end of the room. It was full of late twenties early thirty hipsters. The kind of people that made it through the probationary period on their hipness and graduated to the kind of people who just look cool, pensive, and interesting. The coffee was delicious. The barista took extraordinary care and concern in pouring the steamed milk in the shape of a heart. Nashville hearts L.E. I sat and read for a bit occasionally glancing to see a lovely bridge, giant pile of gravel, and the seats of what I am assuming is the stadium where the Titans play. L.E. hearts city.

This morning I joined a friend for brunch at Bongo Java. Well, a bagel and coffee. It sits across from Belmont University. We sat on the porch on a gorgeous sunny but cool day. This shop too had hipsters. Young ones. The University types that drink their Fair Trade coffee without fully understanding what Fair Trade is and carry their guitars in gig bags in case you didn’t know they were musicians. There was a kid we spotted who alternated between taking a drag of his smoke and snorting nasal spray before offering it to his friend. Who shares nasal spray? They’re young and dangerous! They have punk mullets circa 1976 Sex Pistols. Bongo Java is in an adorable neighborhood. Red brick houses, a thick smattering of trees, and independent clothing exchange stores. Now, I rarely look like I have been dipped in a Thrift Store, but these are my peeps. When I am in that part of town, I begin to feel what I felt on my visit to Nashville last summer: home.

If I could spend every day wasting 4 hours chatting or reading in a coffee shop surrounded by hipsters where I know my t-shirt that says “Balls” will garner an amused smirk or two, I would be a very happy camper.