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Yesterday, in honor of the first day of spring and the GORGEOUS weather we've been having all week, Jared and I took our bikes out the moment we came home from work. We rode into the city, through ghost neighborhoods and past crumbling churches and boarded up factories, and did figure eights outside of City Hall by the McKinley Monument. We stopped for dinner at Spot Coffee on Delaware Ave., and I was a little heartbroken to find that it is slowly turning into a cafe that is just like all the other chain cafes out there.
Spot was originally a local chain with a unique, thrifty style: lots of busted vintage couches and gaudy brass lamps with crystals hanging from the shades, local artwork on the walls, and bold, dark colors used for decorating. The bathrooms were a haven for graffiti artists and poets, a repository for quotations and sentiment, little slices of other people's lives inked onto the walls for all to see. A few weeks ago, the bathroom was painted over in a rich grey paint--I thought perhaps they were just giving us a clean canvas since the other one had filled up. But yesterday I saw with some sadness that the bathroom had been remodeled. It now looks just like all the other chain cafe bathrooms I've been in: grey/brown tile walls, a stylishly large granite sink, new brushed nickel fixtures everywhere. I could have been washing my hands in almost any kind of chain establishment that has renovated in the last 15 years.
I mentioned it to Jared, and when he went into the men's room he said there was a tiny bit of graffiti on the door that read "new walls?! MOAR ART" and even though it's juvenile, it made me happy. It made me glad to see I wasn't the only one who missed the original personality of the local cafe.
Maybe I'm being silly, but it sure does make me sad to see a place like that begin to sell out. I suppose they have to cater to the crowd with the most money--and being voted best place to talk business, I guess they're no longer trying to appeal to the hip local college students any more.
Le sigh. Such is life.
Spot was originally a local chain with a unique, thrifty style: lots of busted vintage couches and gaudy brass lamps with crystals hanging from the shades, local artwork on the walls, and bold, dark colors used for decorating. The bathrooms were a haven for graffiti artists and poets, a repository for quotations and sentiment, little slices of other people's lives inked onto the walls for all to see. A few weeks ago, the bathroom was painted over in a rich grey paint--I thought perhaps they were just giving us a clean canvas since the other one had filled up. But yesterday I saw with some sadness that the bathroom had been remodeled. It now looks just like all the other chain cafe bathrooms I've been in: grey/brown tile walls, a stylishly large granite sink, new brushed nickel fixtures everywhere. I could have been washing my hands in almost any kind of chain establishment that has renovated in the last 15 years.
I mentioned it to Jared, and when he went into the men's room he said there was a tiny bit of graffiti on the door that read "new walls?! MOAR ART" and even though it's juvenile, it made me happy. It made me glad to see I wasn't the only one who missed the original personality of the local cafe.
Maybe I'm being silly, but it sure does make me sad to see a place like that begin to sell out. I suppose they have to cater to the crowd with the most money--and being voted best place to talk business, I guess they're no longer trying to appeal to the hip local college students any more.
Le sigh. Such is life.
