ribble's Quest: Day 5

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Yesterday was the final day of my quest to find the next great writer's cafe, and I'm spent. The day before I'd downed a few too many double cappucinos and I'd been up all night (that's when I learned about Gorillaz).

Yesterday I went to Lucky Cat in Williamsburg. Lucky Cat was the last place mentioned on this thread on Gothamist that I'd decided to look in to. It turned out to be a very nice bar, newly remodeled, where I was told by the very nice owner that I was a little early for open mike night, but it was two for one on beers.


I drank my beers, had an excellent dinner down the street, and retreated to Atlas Cafe, where I found myself too drunk to write a simple chase scene.

So it ends, and not with a bang. Still, I got to know a couple of neighborhoods in the greatest city in the world a little better, and I've found a number of good places to write in New York. Here's my list, in chronological order by date of discovery:

Hungarian Pastry Shop
Amsterdam between 110th and 111th Uptown
Advantages: Best place to write in New York City, free refills
Disadvantages: Waaaay uptown

Mid-Manhattan Library
Bryant Park in Midtown
Advantages: In Midtown, demonstrates blase attitude to national monuments
Disadvantages: Closes at six Thursday through Saturday, no coffee permitted

Tea Lounge
Union St. between 6th Ave. and 7th Ave. in Park Slope
Advantages: Big, lots of kids running around, good grilled cheese, tea
Disadvantages: Too close to my apartment

The Atlas Cafe
Havemeyer and Grand in Williamsburg
Advantages: Not pretentious in any way, free interweb
Disadvantages: Occasionally demonstrate poor taste in music

Grounded
Jane St. at 8th in Greenwich Village
Advantages: Ceiling fans, tea
Disadvantages: Turnover at tables is on the quick edge of acceptable

I should point out that all of these places are quiet with plenty of space to sit, good, cheap beverages and no pressure to leave.

That's it. As quests go, it hasn't been bad.

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ribble's Quest: Day 4

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I had a scary film weekend.

Sunday I started screening submissions for First Sundays, a film festival that shows short comedy films every first Sunday at the Pioneer Theater on the Lower East Side.

After being forewarned by First Sundays co-producer and extremely nice guy Jay Stern that a lot of what I was going to see would be very, very bad, I was just happy nothing I watched was truly unwatchable. What scared me was how easy it was to make a bad film.

The main problems these submitted films had were 1) length and 2) the lack of a strong central comedic idea (know in the film business as a "joke.") It's unfortunate because a lot of bad work looks like it took time and effort to put together, and when the idea isn't there, there's really nowhere for the film to go.


This made the good stuff really stand out, but it also made me start to second guess my own writing. Did I have a strong enough motivation for the protagonist? Where could I tighten the dialogue? That sort of thing. Yesterday I spent rereading both my script and my blog.

This self ego-busting occured at Cafe Doma and Esperanto Cafe in Greenwich Village.

As far as writing, neither was worth a second visit. Cafe Doma was pretty (ceiling fans!) but way too crowded. In a writers cafe, people do not talk very much because they are writing. It was loud enough at Doma that Gorillaz wasn't cutting it and I had to switch to Robert Walter's 20th Congress turned up all the way. It might be okay on a Tuesday around 2:00, but part of the point of a writer's cafe is that you, the writer, are always welcome. Cafe Doma was more than I could be bothered to deal with.

Esperanto Cafe was recommended by my cousin the revolutionary. Earlier this week I had to explain to him that a writer's cafe was not just a place with WiFi. A place with WiFi is where people come through, they get a coffee, they browse the web, they talk to their friends. A writing cafe is a bunch of people hardcore focused on their writing. That said, Esperanto was about what I expected. It was mostly college kids chattin' and doing their college thing.

As far as my writing, it seems to hold together better than I expected. I especially enjoyed rereading this blog. I update because I can't stand not having new content for me to read, like a fashion designer who makes whatever's missing from her closet.

We're getting to the end of this little quest of mine, with just a few scragglers to pick up. It's been a fun little ride.

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ribble's Quest: Day 3

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Today a nice lady pointed out to me that this is the first time in my life when I'm under no external pressure to do anything. Before I was always in school or working, but now I'm out of school and relatively unemployed.

My old friend Tom told me a few months ago that if he were in my position, he'd go to California and learn how to surf. I guess what I'm doing is the ribble equivalent: looking for a quiet place where I can do what I like and be left alone.


In the movie formula, the main character always starts his quest with one objective in mind and then figures out by the end that he's really wanted something else. Like he thinks he wanted as much gas as he can carry, but really he wants the good guys to win. Or he thinks he wants to inherit a fortune, but really he wants to get married. Or he thinks he wants a cup of coffee, but really he wants to sleep with a nun. Well, here's how I'm doing on the coffee:

Today I visited Grounded in Greenwich Village. This was a great writer's cafe.

There were lots of people with laptops, which is the first requirement. Smaller than Hungarian Pastry Shop and Tea Lounge, but I'm getting used to that. Ceramic cups like God intended, music that was good but I could tune out, free interweb and, most importantly, no pressure to leave.

They serve tea as well as coffee, and real brewed-in-a-teapot tea, not pussy-ass, tea-bag, paper-cup tea. It was a nice change after staying up half the night waiting out my three-coffeeshop caffeine buzz (I'm cutting to one coffee shop a day for now).

My favorite feature was ceiling fans. In the South-West, every room of every building has either central air or a ceiling fan. I'm convinced the lack of a ceiling fan infastructure is why summer is so brutal here in New York.

This makes four great places to write in New York (five counting the ones that don't serve coffee), and all in different neighborhoods. I am turning this city in to a personal buffet of artistic pleasure.

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ribble's Quest: Day 2

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Today was the second day in my quest to find New York's next great writer's cafe, and I'm starting to realize just how surreal this little mission is.

It's not just that I'm becoming a caffeine-powered superhero. Because I'm moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, stopping at unfamiliar places and writing in each one, I'm skipping between locations in real New York while writing about events that I'm creating set in a parallel universe New York. Like today I wrote about a scene where a woman's tricked in to stepping out in to traffic in mid-town and has her neck snapped by a taxi. Then I left the library and tried to walk to the subway. Do you have any idea how disorienting that was?

Suggestions for where to find the next great writer's cafe seem to focus on the Village and Williamsburg. Yesterday and today I went to three coffee spots in Williamsburg - Gimme Coffee, Oslo Coffee, and The Atlas Cafe.


These aren't reviews in the normal sense, because I'm looking for something very specific. That said, Atlas Cafe was the clear winner. It looked like a pretty modest place when I first walked in, much smaller than Tea Lounge and Hungarian Pastry Shop, but as soon as I got my mug of coffee and started writing I knew it was going in my regular rotation.

First, the coffee was excellent. Good, strong, kick in the backside brew, served in a real mug because paper cups are for pussies.

Next, there were enough tables that two more people could have come in with their laptops and started writing, so I didn't need to feel guilty about staying as long as I liked.

Then all the other details were perfect. Music was provided but could be safely ignored, refills on coffee were 50 cents, there was free internet that I didn't have to talk to anyone to use, plus it's open late.

Finally, everyone there was working on a laptop. It was the perfect anonymous writing experience. The only problem was there wasn't any food to speak of, but who needs to eat when you're full of coffee and ideals? Oh, and the decaf tasted like swill, but that was my own fault for ordering it.


As writing cafes, the other two didn't cut it. Oslo Coffee was a perfectly nice local coffee joint where you could read a paper - virtuous in its own way, but not a writer's cafe.

Gimme Coffee had internet but only two or three booths. There was nowhere to hide from the constant foot traffic coming in and out of the damn place. The kitchen was loud and the girls there were chatting and listening to NPR. This wasn't a writer's cafe - it was an airport departure lounge grab-and-dash coffee joint.

Tomorrow I'm hitting three places in the Village, which should just leave one straggler on the Upper East Side and a place I missed in Williamsburg. Sleep well, America. I'll join you in bed as soon as the caffeine wears off.

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ribble's Quest

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I don't like writing at home because there are too many distractions, but I've only found a few places in New York where I can write. There's the Mid-Manhattan Public Library, the Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam at Cathedral Parkway, and Tea Lounge in Park Slope.

Each has a unique set of advantages and disadvantages. Hungarian Pastry Shop is the classic writer's cafe. It is dark, everyone there is either writing or talking about books, there's free refills on coffee and they'll give you your cookies and leave you alone. It's a real institution, but it's a ways uptown if you're coming from Brooklyn and working in Chinatown. I go there once or twice a week.

The main branch of the library is right in Midtown and it lets me do my favorite New York thing, which is casually walk through major national landmarks for the most boring of reasons, just to prove I can. It's the same reason I get my perscriptions filled at the Empire State Building. There's free internet if you remember to bring an ethernet cord, which I never do. Major disadvantage: no coffee permitted. Coffee is good for me.


I love Tea Lounge. I wrote the first draft of my screenplay there. It's full of people on laptops and young, stay-at-home mothers with their children, and a little noise when I write helps me concentrate. There's internet, plenty of seating and space, and there's also the charming advantage of drinking tea instead of coffee.

The only problem with Tea Lounge is that it's very close to my apartment, so it's very easy to promise myself I'm going to go write at Tea Lounge and end up at home on the couch doing something much more interesting. I spend more time at Hungarian Pastry Shop because a couple of times during the week I'm already half way there.

I like to have a routine that changes every day. Two or three places to write isn't cutting it. This week I've began a quest to find somewhere between Park Slope and Harlem that's a true writer's cafe. This means there should already be writers working there at all times and I should be able to stay and write as long as I like without feeling guilty (guilt is a big thing for me.)

I'm starting with the posts in this thread on the Gothamist, and here's what I've learned so far:

1) There is a limit to the amount of coffee I should drink in a day.

2) There's a place at Houston and Ave. C called Hamilton Fish Park. This in itself would be worthy of a post, but it turns out the park is also very nice. It's well maintained, quiet (nearly empty at two o'clock on a Tuesday), and beautifully laid out. However, there are no actual fish in the park.

No further results yet. When I find the New York's next great writers' cafe, you'll be the first to know.

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