Stand In The Place Where You Work (and Live)

I'm several weeks into working from home, and it's OK.  I mean, the space works pretty well, but it's still disorienting, and I'm not "used to it" because I keep thinking, "Oh, I can run that errand on the way home."

Oh, never mind.

The bonus is, I can shift my timing a little, so this morning, I went for a 7AM Kroger run before I logged in for my day.  We needed a few things I either forgot or didn't know we needed til I got home from the store on Saturday.  You know, a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter* kind of thing.

I decided to drive home by way of 12th Avenue S., which happens to be my neighborhood.  For those familiar with the area, I want to point out that when we purchased a home here, 12South wasn't yet 12South.  I mean the street was here, it bore the name, but it wasn't the phenomenon that it has come to be.  We couldn't have guessed it would take off the way it did.

Point being, I was kind of jonesing for sugar, and I had the thought that I might stop for a coffee and cookie at Portland Brew.  I'm not a huge coffee drinker, but really I go there for their chocolate chip cookies, which are the thin, well-browned crispy sort.  They're high-quality, buttery, and chocolate in perfect ratio with the rest of the cookie.

The problem is, the cookie no longer is.  The cookie was.  Portland Brew is gone from 12South, y'all.  And I get it.  As coffee shops go went, it feels felt like a small indie shop you'd find in a college town.  Their drink menu was basic, they had a small menu of breakfast/lunch items.  The ambience was dark and spare in the back portion, light-filled and spare in the front.  This was where people who actually wanted to drink coffee, and maybe work on some writing went to do that.  It was not instagrammable, cute, trendy, or fancy.  It was basically, and ideal coffee shop.  Now, it didn't help that they built a free-standing convenience store next door to it.  It's a White Bison/Twice Daily kind of place - an upscale convenience store where you can get an overpriced shitty sandwich.  And probably cheap, bad coffee.  I don't know, I've never visited.  Now, if you're a tourist and want the fancy coffee experience, let's face it, you're going a block north to visit Frothy Monkey.  Which is pretty OK coffee, but it's very much a curated experience.  Like Fido, but more pretentious.  Fido is on 21st S, and it's delightful.  And maybe it's just as pretentious as Frothy Monkey.  Whatever.  I like both well enough, but Portland Brew was more like the 12S I remember moving to in 2005.  Anyway - things change, I guess, is the idea behind all this.

According to The Tennessean, in an article from July, they closed at the end of August.  Which is why we should always read our local paper.

Anyway, plus ça change, and all that.  I am trying to embrace the change.  But now, with one less icon of my old neighborhood (see also:  Katy K's, Las Paletas, Mirror, Corierri's Formaggeria, Rumors, Trim, the sketchy carwash, and so on and on).  

I am also trying to embrace the other change, which is my new office, sans people.

The other big change is that Mom has moved into an assisted living facility, due to a number of recent falls of varying levels of severity.  And we're in the process of preparing her house to sell.  But that change is so enormous in scope that it's easy to put it aside while I mourn the loss of a good coffee shop.

ae

*Actually it was milk, grapefruit juice, bananas, potato chips, and a small bag of Riesen for my emergency sugar stash.