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Coffee.

At it’s base level it serves as a stimulant. That’s it. We’re supposed to drink it, get pepped, then continue on our way like the busy worker bee, society specifies us to be.

Except it isn’t that simple. There is a whole culture surrounded around coffee, and it’s a culture of sitting. Which strikes me as incredibly strange… coffee the stimulant, is used as an excuse to sit, relax, and chat with friends. What? When did this happen? We do this with booze, but that makes sense, you have a glass of wine and you relax. The most fascinating part about coffee culture to me are the shops. They each are so incredibly different, with hyperly different people within them, yet they all come to the coffee shops to do the same things: Study, work, chat with friends, escape from life, and drink some form of beverage. So I’ve decided to travel to these different shops and basically just describe what I see. Why, because people are fucking weird.

The Nomad Cafe is located on the border of Berkeley and Oakland. Brokeland. It’s a weird mix of the freaky bourgie Berkeley-ite and the Scrappy Oaklander. The look is minimal and steel, yet vaguely funky. As if designed by a German architect who enjoys to dabbling acrylics from time to time. I attended a buddy’s art opening here a while back, they served vegan doughnuts. Yeah, it’s that sort of place.

I took my friend, Tamar- who needed to study for her Master’s degree, in Speech Pathology. She was feeling kinda vommy, and since she’s not one to censor herself, the minute we walked in she started to cheerfully talk about which tea is good for the stomach. I wasn’t sure she was talking to me, and neither was the Barista. We both sorta stood there as she rambled about green tea, until he finally interjected, “I just drank some green tea and I feel fiiiiine,” then promptly did the robot. He was the quintessential Blipster (aka black hipster) I can say this because I very dangerously teeter on the edge of blipster-dom. His gigantic textured fro wavered back and forth while he continued to dance for longer than I expected. His two co-workers casually glanced at him and shook their heads. Why they looked at him with mild distaste was beyond me, because they too were tragically hip: another black guy with glasses, a faux hawk afro, singing “Purple Rain” and a white guy with a top knot. These guys screamed Oakland Hipsters- kinda dirty, kinda don’t care, but still wear expensive clothes. I ordered my latte, and took a seat letting Tamar ramble on about tea with the dancing barista. While I set up my computer, I started to notice the clientele. A mildly attractive man wearing clogs, and a mildly nerdy man with a cascading curl of a a pony tail working on his computer. When Tamar finally joined me at the table with her green tea, we chatted a little bit, while soft R&B played in the background. She determined that the Dancing barista was high, because as soon as I left he asked her if I had ordered a latte, then stated, “Shit, I gotta make that…” I looked over to the counter, and saw that he was again doing the Robot for another customer. I dived into work, as did Tamar. Every once in a while she would proclaimed things like,

“SYNARTHRODIAL JOINT!” Making me very glad I wasn’t in school any longer, but also sad about the decrease of intellect I managed to squander with drinking the past 5 years since graduating from undergrad. While we talked about the random customers and stoned baristas, the R&B stopped and was promptly replaced with:

MEKE- AKA- OHHH (THUMP THUMP) AOKA-KA-LAKA-OH!! (THUMP THUMP).

This halted our conversation, and Tamar gave me a slow disapproving shake of her head. At the table adjacent to ours a weathered old man sat facing empty space saying, “Ohh noo. Yes. Ohhh nooo. Yes.” He got up and ran out the door. Not really knowing what to do with this, I dived back into my work.

“Bones are the most dense tissue in the body because of salt deposits.” Tamar muttered trying to drown out the music. I couldn’t work, so I starred out the window, trying to let the chants take me away to a far and tropical place. A bum walked by and mistook my daydreams for interest. He continued to look at me as he sauntered by on his way to (I suspect) nowhere. After he passed, a man in a brown striped suit and a backpack with a ukulele poking out swerved by on his bike. “Do you think bones are heavier than muscle?” Tamar asked snapping me back into the cafe surroundings.

“I would think bones are heavier than all the rest of the goopy stuff in our bodies.”

I’m glad I didn’t take the medical path in life.

The chanting turned into pleasant Hawaiian guitar riffs, and the mildly nerdy cascading curl guy took the opportunity to do some yoga stretches.

I sat back, took a sip of my latte and decided I very much enjoyed the mellow wackiness of the Nomad Cafe.

Nomad Cafe

6500 Shattuck Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609