A latte taken when you should be somewhere else, when you should be doing something that others consider useful, this is the best kind of latte. It is an illicit latte. When enjoying an illicit latte, Bill can’t help himself – he looks around with curiosity. In this new column, he shares those observations with us – a completely new approach to reviews.
I have to tell you, I must tell you, how, this morning at ten, after having been up without latte since five-thirty, how, this morning, I momentarily fell in love with the woman who made me my latte, fell in love as she moved in confidence and speed without disturbing the artwork mohawk of her hair and the striking beauty of her skin.
Sitting sipping my illicit latte afterwards, I came gradually into myself and was able to look around. This is what I recorded about this particular morning at Crema:
A woman with a green and blue bandana wrapped around her head writes notes into a binder. A square-faced man in black and white types intently on his laptop, as he sits upright in pants that were not too tight when he was slimmer.
The gentle male voices with guitars coax me over the speakers.
A man with smooth south-Asian skin ruggedly outlined by his two-day beard handwrites changes to pages of typed text. A multi-coloured hat on a three year old turns as she looks away from her teddy bear to her mother, as the mother urgently orders a morning latte.
Is the Junction the suburbia for alternative Toronto? There is an atmosphere of calm competence here.
From the speakers, there are now women’s voices supported by a gentle electronic beat that seems somehow comforting.
A young man with hair just falling over his eyes behind the counter looks away as I look at him, and then he looks back at me, and then away again, while maintaining a protective impassivity on his face.
A man in sandals with a smile I would like to know sits down at the next table with a wedding ring and a document titled landscape proposal. We say a few words, those few words that individuals in a safe and diverse City say when they are in temporary proximity. We will now never speak again in our lives. Do I care? The first answer is, as it always is in the City, an oblique: “I am used to it.”
There are words coming from behind me and then beside me as a man and woman in uniform walk past talking about styles of architecture. The woman in uniform for a moment puts her arm around the man in uniform as they wait before the just-hair-covered-eyes guy behind the counter.
I look around at each of those I have described, and I watch them as they focus on their own lives. I will know no more about them than I have described. They will know no more of me. Do we care? We are used to it.
The baked goods are very good. The latte is excellent. The atmosphere is, fascinatingly, the upwardly mobile alternative. My rating is three stars.
Photo Credit, Flickr user Road Fun
