BYE, ’BOU

No more ’Bou to love, alas. The local Caribou Coffee is on its way out, giving the Evil Mermaid free rein in the immediate neighborhood. Just damn!

The mood was uncharacteristically glum this morning as the Minyan Boyz piled into the local Caribou Coffee outlet for our post-davening breakfast.

We had gotten the word already through the Social Media Matrix, but the printed paper signs plastered to the windows made it official: this coming Sunday would be the last day Caribou would operate the place.  Eventually, thanks to the miracle of corporate buying and selling, it will be reincarnated as a Peet’s Coffee shop... but until then, it will stand mute, defunct.

The baristas were melancholy, as befits people who have just received their walking papers.  The next days would be filled with happy, jovial activities: updating résumés, arranging interviews, checking the classifieds (Does anyone still look for jobs in the classifieds anymore?), and wondering how to pay next month’s rent.  I do not envy them...

...and yet, we will miss them.  We’ll miss the place, too, with its high vaulted ceilings and wooden tables, but it’s the people that made the place special, far more than the caffeinated delights they doled out.  They would always manage a smile, even when the drive-thru line was packed and things got more than a little frantic.  They knew us well enough to have our orders ready within seconds of our walking in the door - often without even having to ask.  (“Hot cereal, no sugar, no salt, with a half-side of craisins, golden raisins, and almonds; mug of coffee, half light and half dark roast, with room.”)  And if our services ran overlong owing to some calendrically driven quirk of the liturgy, they’d notice when we showed up late.

As I was moved to observe when I had a kidney stone some ten years ago, this, too, shall pass.  Things change, and given sufficient time, everything changes... and the things we love (or like) eventually go away.  But we are not obligated to be happy about it.