My Cafe Report X.
Yelp
Little Zelda is a café unlike any other. This is a fact as much as you (you!) are unlike anyone I have ever met. But when I absorb you into my globby sticky brain, I will liken you to other people you remind me of. In other words, I will make you less unique in my head to understand you better, to like you better. I think the things I have more familiar associations with are more special, paradoxically.
Return to the top. Little Zelda is a cafe unlike any other. Here are the things it reminds me of: Toulouse-Lautrec paintings; my moody high school soundtrack filled with Rachmaninov, Ravel, and movie soundtracks; my tumblr back when I used tumblr... My brain has a stock of so many images that connect to Little Zelda, particularly nostalgic ones, that I can't help but like it. This web of images exists alongside my real memory of visiting Little Zelda. This real memory starts with arriving at Crown Heights, then seeing people scattered across patio tables. As I walked up the path between the tables and slipped inside, I remember thinking of Paris, of people sitting facing the street.
The inside was diminutive. I liked it immediately. It felt like a nook that embraced being a nook. It used rich colors and low lighting to shrink itself further, the reverse of real estate listings that use tricks to make rooms look bigger. The paneled walls were painted mustard yellow, with a stripe of brick red at the top. A bench upholstered with ripped emerald-colored fabric ran along the curves of the left wall. Individuals, or at most pairs, sat along the bench, under a shelf of variegated punch cards and faded prints framed in glass. A tidy blackboard read:
Community Roommate Apt Hunt
No BrOKers
The café offerings were scribbled on two mirrors in white marker (flash to the scene in the French film Amelie where Amelie writes the dish of the day on the glass, while the mysterious man she is too shy to approach sits in front of the glass she is writing on). One of these mirrors hung right by the door and was lined with photobooth photos of unknown people and children (flash to the scene in Amelie where the photobooth in the train station breaks and... I'm not going to explain it. Just watch the movie -.-). Below the mirror was a ledge; this was where I sat, perched on a stool. Its paint was peeling. For some reason, there was a pencil sharpener installed on the right edge; it was the manual kind that would be attached by every blue classroom door in my old elementary school, and which even back then, had already fallen out of use. I sipped on my americano and listened to the barista hum along to Joe Hisaishi, their head hovering behind the bar, behind cups holding mismatched utensils and espresso cups. Above the coffee grinders, a large black shelf jutted out from the wall; between its braided columns were bags of beans and a black and white photo of a just-married couple. At the far back of the café, a frosted glass window emitted light, sparse and cool. A pothos (sigh) hung by it, below a muted medieval landscape.
I finished my americano. Two pairs of people situated along the emerald-colored bench whispered simultaneously. Their murmured words mingled like a church hymn. Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2 began to play, taking me back to high school orchestra (flash); one of the four speakers uttered "situationship," and I came back to the present day.
I sat idle. I looked out the front window. Locked bikes and a crowd of trash cans sat at the edge of the sidewalk. There was a large potted plant crowned with the most golden yellow dandelion. Gnats played over it. A man in red wearing headphones and a gold chain strode by, slowly clearing out the trash.
Little Zelda was all familiar and not familiar at all.
