woobiquity

Jumble sale

Proving yet again that one man's junk is another's box of magic letters. (Box/letters, outside The Junk Shop, Greenwich, yesterday.)

Make mine a flat white

How do I love thee, coffeehouse? Let me count the ways. Let’s see, there’s the air that’s heavy with the smell of really good espresso grounds. There’s the bad art on the walls that whispers, “go on, you can paint too – we’re all creative here.” There are the kooky furnishings, and the staff whose genuine smiles don’t seem to be linked to a battery pack on their backs, and the mildly crazy American lady at the next table, close to rapture over the beauty of the leafy swirls in the coffee froth (“it’s a work of art, I tell you – a work of art if I’ve ever seen one”).

Suddenly it seems there’s a proliferation of Australian coffeehouses in town. If two can count as a proliferation; anyway there may be loads more that I don’t yet know about.

A 'long black'. Well, half a long black.

Here again is Soho’s infinite ability to renew itself, regardless of rising rents, Vauxhaull flight, the chain-ification of Compton Street, the erstwhile Mayor’s vow to scrub the whole area to until it gleamed, and the lamentable late-ness of Blue Room.

Out of the ashes, Milk Bar (3 Bateman Street), a delightfully warm, post-minimalist hideout where the signage is wonky children’s magnets and one wall is quickly filling up with show posters, in tastefully-contained homage to the dusty, ragtag accrual that, when Blue Room occupied this space, used to wallpaper anything that couldn't get up and leave.

Over on Berwick Street there's the more established relation, Flat White, with (like all great little coffeehouses) a nondescript exterior which belies the goodness within. That becoming acquainted with these places requires a vocabulary lesson in Australian coffee-speak ('flat white', 'long black' ) merely makes it all that much more poetic.

The writing on the wall

Near the Dom, Cologne, Germany, Saturday evening.