The Only Vibrant Coffee Shop on the Upper West Side

Georgia's, the last coffee shop within thirty blocks of my apartment, happens to be on the next corner up from my very own door. I love it there. It started out as a small bakery with no chairs and very little elbow room, squished between the displaced barber shop and a t-mobile (another one). Slowly, through dedicated patronage from the remaining Upper West neighborhood set, it became incredibly successful, and when the symbol of the decline of my neighborhood closed, it valiantly and incredibly managed to take it over and become a real shop with a few small tables. Today, it sprawls over the whole corner of Broadway, and its quaint tables spill out onto the street. There a couple of truly wonderful things about Georgia's:

1) it is a coffee shop
2) it has decent coffee
3) the waiters will let you sit there for hours - it can be, at times, near impossible to actually get your check, which is an anomaly most definitely

Unfortunately, like all things good in my once deli-filled neighborhood, Georgia's too is slowly losing that which makes it truly unique: it is becoming a restaurant.

Yes, a restaurant - just like your average brunch place on Amsterdam Avenue, or the aptly retitled "Bloomingdale Road"(the once and well mourned Boulevard Restaurant of my youth, totally redone with a WASPy makeover - the mural of a diverse and slightly crude New York City subway platform long gone forever). This means that soon, it will lose all three of the above qualities which make it my monument to what the Upper West Side could be if it got rid of a few banks.

I realized I had never, as yet, really used Georgia's as a real coffee shop - I hadn't sat there reading or typing on my computer or sipping coffee leisurely by myself perusing the Times. I had certainly gone there for a cup of coffee and chatted for hours with friends, but never alone and never for writing. And ultimately, the reason I love coffee shops so much is that it is a chance to sit with my laptop and get some writing done without forgoing human interaction - I can be solitary but not alone. Coffee shops were my great savior on my loneliest days out west - I'd grab my computer or my book and head over to Philz or Revolution or anywhere, really, and suddenly I'd be surrounded by people who loved the ambiance as much as I did. And we were connected, through coffee and work and folk music over the speakers.

So, I decided that before Georgia's goes the way of my deli, I should at least try to sit there with my computer.

I was confident that I wouldn't look totally bizarre, since I'd seen people by themselves at Georgia's before - the small coffee tables are perfectly conducive to singledom, but are more frequently occupied by multiple people, increasingly with food. But I went early, when I was sure I wouldn't take a table from a lunch customer, and brought my laptop and got to it.

I felt pretty weird at first - I sat down at a table outside, and realized that sitting outside in the West Village or in the East Village or really anywhere else is not like sitting outside on Broadway, with all of the morning traffic and rush hour madness passing at top speed. It's a weird feeling - watching other people who are not prepared for you to be there looking askance and walking faster. Broadway, the street of theatrical energy, is not for idle coffee and computers.

On top of that, the early morning crowd was peopled with young mothers and their very young children, having a chocolate croissant and a chance to breath for a moment. I, a single 23 year old on my beat up laptop and sweatshirt about to head off to her low-paying theater job, don't exactly jive with the vibe.

But I got over it. It was lovely out. And my part of Broadway really is one of the most beautiful in the whole city, with pre-war buildings and wide sidewalks - it's a pity there aren't open air cafes everywhere because it is a singular experience, watching the cars go by and all that space to stroll up and down. And my coffee was warm and my quiche was damn good and I'm not married or pregnant and that feels pretty fucking good too. And I got some work done. And I used Georgia's the way, in a perfect world, I would use it all the time. I don't think I'll go back there with the same purpose - I've found an early morning place close to work that I can go to that is actually a coffee shop, and I'd rather not make passersby any more nervous than they already are. But it felt good, like I was taking back a little piece of my neighborhood.