We find today everywhere examples of mass produced luxury. Sitting in a coffee house atop dark wood chairs, next to a floor to ceiling fireplace adorned with an exotic artwork, I am both everywhere and nowhere. Starbucks, or Second-Cup, even the new-look Macdonalds embrace an architecture of bare wood, rock and leather wingback chairs alongside [...]
Archive for the ‘coffee’ Category
“Chic-ness” and Cheapness – the materiality of the modern aesthetic
Posted in Body Phenomenology, Capitalism, Ethics, Food, Pragmatics, Pubs, Technology, Things, coffee, writing on November 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
An Adventure in the Making
Posted in Capitalism, Ethics, Technology, beginning, coffee, global warming on June 23, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Is this the Vehicle that will take me across Canada? The story began several weeks ago with some couch surfers who needed to sell a Van they had driven from Vancouver to Montreal and Toronto. Unfortunately, they were not able to sell it. Which was lucky for me, because it meant they were willing to [...]
Montreal Week
Posted in Art, Capitalism, coffee on May 28, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I’ve spent the last week in Montreal at my friend Nell’s place. It’s been quite excellent getting to know the city I’ve always loved, but never for very long in person. I saw the Tam-Tams, hung out in the cemamtery with an old friend drinking Unibrou on the Molson tome, spent two days in the [...]
Vancouver to Portland – By public transit alone
Posted in Capitalism, Pragmatics, Technology, coffee on May 6, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Why do things just seem more adventuresome out West? Maybe it has something to do with the people I know there. My UBC friends Mike Kushnir and Aaron Palm, and Mathieu from Quebec, are on a transit odyssey. The project: to travel from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Portland Oregon – by public transit alone. It’s [...]
The Taste of Coffee
Posted in coffee on April 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I like the taste of coffee, but I do not consider myself well trained concerning tasting coffee. I know when I like the taste of coffee, and I know when I do not like it, but I can hardly know how to make a cup of coffee taste good or bad. Crucially however, I have [...]
Spring Warmth, and the at-home
Posted in Pragmatics, Technology, coffee on April 3, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Today is the first day where it has been warm enough for our patio to be a reasonably nice place to sit (that’s where I am now in fact, thanks to my new micro-PC). There’s a feeling of elation in the spring – the habitable world expands out your front door. On Tuesday I tried [...]
Jet Fuel
Posted in Music, Things, coffee on March 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“Jet Fuel” is a coffee shop in the cabbagetown region of Toronto. Three things make it distinctive.
a)Mixed coffee drinks (i.e. mocha, americano, etc…) come in pint glasses.
b)Only espresso drinks (no drip, perculated or pressed coffee)
c)It sponsors cycle racing.
It’s excellent for a number of other reasons as well. It has an excellent sitting/table area in the [...]
First Post from New Machine
Posted in Art, Body Phenomenology, Pragmatics, Technology, Things, coffee on March 16, 2008 | 5 Comments »
So, after accepting the offer to stay at York to do my PhD, I decided I deserved a present. So here it is – an Asus Eee 4g non-surf. It’s a subnoatbook. It’s a hobbyist computer. It’s smaller than most of my medium sized books. The keyboard at first seems desperately small – a real [...]
On Tea
Posted in Things, coffee, writing on February 15, 2008 | 3 Comments »
I have begun this year to drink a lot more tea. In the past I was a bit snobbish about tea – I only wished to drink loose leaf tea and only from the best stores. This does not translate well when you live by yourself and your only kitchen is a mile high stack [...]
Hamilton Art Crawl
Posted in Capitalism, God, Music, beginning, coffee on January 13, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Hamilton is often dismissed as a place to leave, not to visit. However, as the James North Art crawl showed last night, it has a good bit of culture left in it. (Perhaps organized by those who forgot that Hamilton was a place they were supposed to leave before they did anything interesting). It seems [...]
