It Takes a Village Coffee Shop

The spoon is greasy and I am reborn.

In 2017, three years after planning a divorce from a narcissist (the final split wouldn’t actually happen until two years later than even that), I moved into a little studio apartment, where I lived all alone for the first time in my life. I had lived on my own before that marriage, obviously, but the rent in Boulder, Colorado is so very high, that I’d always need a roommate. This little studio, though, was reasonable enough that I could actually manage it myself. I wrote the following piece during this era in 2017, after I had just freshly moved into the Birdhouse. 

I named my new apartment The Birdhouse because: a) it was on the third floor, with no elevator, so you had to climb three flights of old smoothened wooden stairs to get there; b) it had (fake) wood floors and a vaulted ceiling, so it was like a little wood box style birdhouse that kids might make in shop class; c) my nickname at the time was Bird or Jennybird, and it was my house; d) there was a very loud and friendly unkindness of huge ravens* that often roosted either on its roof or the roof across the street—there was a cable protruding from right near my westernmost window, and they’d sometimes perch there and yell at me right through that window. And they’d socialize and have big luxurious meals out of the dumpsters in the parking lot below.

Ravens are my favorite animal, so I did feel like I was being kind of, I dunno, protected by good spirits? The apartment building was right on a busy street, and fringed one of the crunchiest neighborhoods in Boulder—filled with old neglected houses with too many college kids crammed into one, and ancient buildings filled with apartments that were way too small, with stairs that were literal hazards, and there was something slightly off about the water (I found out later). Rent was required to be physical checks, deposited by hand into a little lock box on one of the apartment buildings’ wall of mailboxes. Drug addicts, drunken students, and other transient folk ambled through the nearby alley in a steady trickle; sometimes they’d scream things, other times they’d get into fights. I never heard gunshots, but then Boulder isn’t really a gun-friendly town exactly. Lots of meth though. You get the picture.

*Of all the panoply of weird names for groups of animals, “an unkindness of ravens” is one of the most bizarre, don’t you think?

The Birdhouse was not one of those cheap, claustrophobic and grim cubicles—it had multiple windows and vaulted ceilings with big skylights. So it felt bigger than it was, and had a plethora of natural light. The previous dozen years I’d been living in a townhouse in sort-of-suburb Gunbarrel, which was about a half hour away from central Boulder by bus, and across from an eerie prairie that was undeveloped open space. You could often spy an eagle scoping out the fields for mice, and coyotes could regularly be heard howling code at each other, too far off to see. I had been so isolated from my hometown there in that remote place with my gaslighting husband, and now that I was alone in the Birdhouse, a short walk away from the bustling Boulder downtown, I felt like I’d been freed from prison. Because I pretty much had been. 

One of the last pics I sentimentally snapped of the Birdhouse, just before I moved out, in 2022. That was an emotional process too, in a different way. That’s for a different piece of writing maybe. Yeah?

So that’s the context of the Birdhouse. I came across this musing below on an old blog of mine and I was amazed at how life works in cycles sometimes. Remember that one article I called “Bicycle Face?” Where I was musing about what it felt like at 18 to move into a dorm room and have all the mobility of my bike and my alone-ness, not needing to check in with any guardian but free to make my own choices of what to do with my days? Yeah. That. After more than 20 years, there I was, in my 40s, suddenly freed in nearly exactly the same way, in my little dorm-room-sized apartment, alone and free. The following musing, then, is about the fresh Birdhouse experience, and how I , blinking, stepped out of the dim gaslight into the sun.

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March 2017

Does a diner counter count as a bar? Well it looks like a bar, and it’s got bar stools, padded red and chrome. Just because I’m not drinking alcohol at this bar counter…actually coffee is an equally important drug in my world. More important than alcohol, even. I can function perfectly well without booze, but sans coffee? Not much happens, besides a terrible headache.

I walked down the block and around the corner to the Village Coffee Shop late this morning. One of those classic greasy spoons with very little seating, a lunch counter at which you can watch the line cooks spread volumes of shredded hash browns across the flat-top grill, but not the kind of place where you really want to watch them do so very closely. The bar was wiped down as I sat, a welcoming red carpet, and the server who asked if I wanted coffee and called me sweetie looked to be at least as old as my parents, if not older. I told her yes, and when it came I poured the correct amount of half and half and white sugar into the watery stuff in the white ceramic cup.

I used to come here all the time as a young adult, as the food was greasy and cheap, perfect for a teenager or a heavy drinker. Still is, too: my two eggs, mass of shredded potato, and two whole slices of toast was only five bucks. This place hasn’t changed. When I came here with my parents as a little kid, I’d always order those single-serve boxes of breakfast cereal, of a sugary variety I’d never be allowed to eat at home. But I no longer have a sweet tooth, haven’t really since my 20s.

There’s a tradition here that I had forgotten about: the Village Virgin cheer. Anyone coming to the diner for the first time gets announced loudly as a Village Virgin, and the whole packed, bustling place cheers and applauds. I’m very much not a Village Virgin, though this morning in particular I was feeling a lot like one.

Living completely alone for the first time, and so close to the busiest part of town and the historic pedestrian mall, I continue to be taken aback by how strange my hometown feels to me now. The cradle of my childhood, the place where I grew up. Coffeeshops and bookstores I’d haunt frequently as a gothy teen. Even little things like making my own decisions about what to do with my day have become foreign to me; I haven’t done such a thing in so long. Every little thing, from what time I wake up in the morning to my day plans, and everything in between, has been dictated by cohabiting with my husband. Now, walking down to the diner, or to my fave pub, I’m timid and full of wonder, in awe of the familiar. A wide eyed regular.

I’ve been to the Village Coffee Shop so many times, but haven’t been in a long time, adhering to the somewhat enforced healthy eating habits my husband (and therefore I) cultivated in recent months especially. None of these eggs are locally farmed, I’m sure, and I doubt any of the meat is grass fed. The toast, though wheat, is of the cheapest variety, and the coffee is terrible. This is as it should be. This is right. I find myself both nostalgic and exploring my home anew. A fresh start, as my coffee is refreshed.

The correct way to have a diner breakfast is: over-easy eggs, add salt and pepper. The hash browns, leaking butter, require ketchup. The toast needs must have jam or marmalade added to the already-buttered centers, the crusts used for runny egg yolk. This may not be healthy, or even good, but it is the correct way. And it is in fact tasty, and filling.

The correct way to have diner coffee is: two creams, one sugar. Never mind that I have been taking my organic coffee black for a good long while now, and especially never mind the Bulletproof (tm) coffee my ex-husband has gotten me addicted to, that I’d been drinking at that home. Nope. Diner coffee requires these things, and it is best.

Coffee was a big part of teen culture here in Boulder, as it’s a college and an otherwise young party town, which of course means at night there’s nothing social to do but alcohol. When one cannot legally do so, and it’s midnight or later? We’d go to Denny’s. Two creams, one sugar. All night. We’d also go there very early in the morning, before jazz choir began at 7:20 am. At prom, we promised each other (the whole group of four friends) that we would NOT, repeat, NOT end up at Denny’s. It was a matter of principle, dammit. But then when after-prom was over and it was three o’clock in the morning, guess where we ended up? Of course. Where else could we go?

Once me and my two besties graduated high school and went to college, the Denny’s was located equidistantly between the dorm where I lived, and the dorm where they lived. I had originally planned to move in with them, and continue our tight triumvirate relationship, but then I was accepted into the Honors program, and the Honors dorm that came along with it. I chose to add to my scholarly cred instead of the friendly debauchery that I found out later happened at that other dorm. I think they felt initially kind of betrayed by this choice, so in an attempt to patch things up and assure each other we’d still be friends, we’d meet at Denny’s for late night study sessions. Studying rarely happened, but chocolate shakes with fries did, as did Moons Over My Hammy. About a year later, the three of us moved into our first apartment, in a cheap and shady complex right behind that same Denny’s. 

That Denny’s is closed now. As is the L.A. Diner, which I was reminiscing about just the other day. I remember the servers at the latter wore roller skates, which is pretty impressive. A bunch of us highschoolers once got kicked out for having ice and drinking-straw fights between booths. We also got in trouble for our creamer tower competitions—we’d jam our emptied creamer tubs into each other and stack them higher and higher (what the tallest tower constructor won, I have no idea. Bragging rights?) until we’d all have these teetering, cream-dripping Leaning Towers of Piza craning impossibly tall.

As I watch the busser wipe down the counter after my meal, I find myself not worrying about the cleanliness standards. Greasy spoon, indeed, after all, and my own new little place is grimy too, for all that I went over its surfaces with bleach wipes a few times already. Not that it, as an old apartment, is any grimier than my home was with the ex. Less so, probably. It’s just that it’s not my grime, yet. I feel like a guest here though I have paid rent. Takes time, I suppose.

I have seasoned this place with some of my salt already though. It happened last night: I slipped on the unaccustomed smooth fake wood floors and landed with my face on the edge of the desk. No sign of this injury shows today, other than a slight swelling and a more than slight ache. I flex my jaw, testing that pain, and decide that I need a better cup of coffee from the coffee bar across the street, for my walk home in the light rain. Organic. Black.

I am still a Boulderite, after all.