![]() ![]() I was taking an anthropology class with renowned folklore professor Alan Dundes. That feeling of bookish excitement made me think back to a moment during my senior year at Berkeley. By the end of the month, six of us had crossed the 50,000-word finish line. When your sole literary ambition is visiting the toilet and ducking the Doritos tab, it’s amazing how much writing you can get done in a night. Laggers had to buy snacks for the speedier typists, and no one was allowed to go to the bathroom until they’d produced 1,000 words. So after the starting gun sounded, we began meeting after work at local coffee shops, where we’d break out our laptops and race one another to the day’s word-count goal. None of us knew the first thing about novel writing, but we were smart enough to realize we’d never get through it alone. I jokingly called it National Novel Writing Month, and 21 of us signed on. Anyone who made it to 50K would be a winner. Each of us would attempt our own 50,000-word books, and there would be neither judges nor prizes. My idea was to recruit as many of my friends as possible to write novels in 30 days. Somewhere in that haze of aimlessness and espresso, a very dumb idea was born. Instead, I had become The Creepy Guy Who Graduated Four Years Ago Who Sits Alone in Caffe Strada All Day Reading. I had loved the anthro major as an undergrad, but by 1999 I was beginning to wish my parents had browbeaten me into becoming an accountant. The year was 1999, and I was living in Oakland, still trying to figure out what to do with my degree in cultural anthropology. However, we both knew we wouldn’t’ve travelled all that way for nothing less than worthwhile.Four years after I graduated from Cal, I accidentally started a movement that now produces more fiction than all of America’s MFA programs combined. At that point, I had been to Caffe STRADA countless times whereas Jackie had never been before. I don’t think I will ever forget how excited Jackie looked when we got to the cafe. After a total of eight photos of her next to it, we hopped back on train to go enjoy some brunch. On our way to Ivanhoe, we made a quick little stop at Fairfield Station because Jackie wanted to look at the Fairfield Industrial Dog Object on the corner of Station Street and Wingrove Street. Jackie and I left the house at 6:30AM which gave us more time to enjoy our day. 28th of FebruaryĪ favourite Friday adventure of mine was on the 28th of February. It became my safe haven a place I knew I could go without having to ask the usual questions.Ĭan they guarantee that it’s Coeliac Safe?Īll the usual anxiety I had toward eating out dissipated each time I visited Caffe STRADA. Since going with Vicki, Alice and Hannah, I have done the three hour round trip via Public Transport to Caffe STRADA every second week leading up to the pandemic. I don’t think I have ever been so grateful for a walk through the park as I was for that one. Before we left, she said she knew this place in Ivanhoe which was Gluten Free that we could walk their Miniature Dachshund, Lottie, to. ![]() My aunt Vicki took me and her two daughters, Alice and Hannah, on a walk through Darebin Parklands. Funnily enough, Caffe STRADA is the one cafe I can blame someone else for getting me hooked on. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |