The Latte Manifesto

Evidenced by a mounting frustration and general lack of patience, fringing on a barely suppressed desire to poink people in the head with a fork. Not deep enough to cause excessive bleeding or permanent damage, but deep enough to stick out and be a little funny, in a slapstick kind of way, and it should also hurt a bit. Let’s just say the amount and duration of extra-skull pain generated by the fork should be directly in proportion to the intra-skull pain generated by the forkee’s personality. To wit: There is a somewhat new restaurant around the corner called Café Gratitude. Signs that this restaurant might be annoying: 1: It is in Berkeley. 2: It is vegan. 3: Seating is community style, big tables. You eat with strangers, and presumably have a conversation about how colon cleansing in India changed your life, or, chew quietly and hold your tablemates’ spirits in a loving, grateful presence. 4: Menu items are titled as affirmations. For example, if you want to order the stuffed avocado, you must say “I Am Generous”. For tea: “I Am Vibrant”. I Am Mystified. The waitress informs me that the question of the day is, “Who are you grateful for in your life?” A better question: Will I be able to hold down food in this environment? (Answer: Yes. I did it. And the food was pretty great.) I still wanted to catch the next JetBlue to Manhattan, where I am certain that anyone who even thought about opening a Cafe Gratitude would be, under pain of torture (this torture somehow involving a turkey baster and soup cooked above 118 degrees thereby destroying its nutritional, and let’s be honest, spiritual, potential), forced to stand in front of a McDonald’s and scream “Namaste, motherf*cker!” at all passerby. And now I have to talk about the Lesbians-On-E. Maybe this happens at other restaurants, but it happened to me at Cafe Gratitude, so they will be held partially accountable. A hipsterish young couple was seated next to me. They were high on something that made them giddy and spastic to an extent not normally associated merely with the rush that comes from eating live! raw! vegan! food! I wanted to knock their heads together, just hard enough so they would be dazed and stop skipping around the tables and giving me that presumptious glare that says “you’re looking at us because we’re lesbians”, when in fact I don’t give a crap about your orientation, I am looking at you because you’re freaking grownups playing hide-and-seek in the middle of a restaurant, and I just want to eat my goddamn stuffed avocado. I mean, I AM GENEROUS. You see, it’s these kinds of slightly violent thoughts that lead me to believe that a vacation might be in order.