Today is Bruno’s last day. For a month.
Of the best twenty cups of coffee in Amsterdam, Bruno’s is certainly in the top three. Lockdown means you can only get things to go, so trips to White Label or Black Gold, where normally I would sit, happen less frequently now. And with Bruno’s closest to where I live at the moment, he’s getting the bulk of my business.
Bruno is a madman of coffee. His shotgun store is full of beans only he carries, coffee “instruments” I’ve seen nowhere else, and an aesthetic of wierd plants and pictures from Itialy which, If I do not exactly love, do tell me exactly where I am in the world: At Bruono’s and nowhere else.
How many places where you spend money can you say that about? I know people like familiarity and even more than familiarity they like their surroundings to tell them they are special, that because the hotel is covered in gold rather than silver, is a Hilton rather than a Marriot (or whatever), they can feel good about who they are. But if you were transported from one such place to another it would be difficult to distinguish them. So much commercial space is indistinguishable except for what it tells you about the income of the people who shop there.
Yet love and friendship are about the particular and the mom and pop store can enchant and make you happy as no known brand can because it is space made by a person, not a concept. It has signature.
Inside, back when you could sit there, Bruno did not allow laptops. I loved that. I miss that. I am surely reading less as a result of that.
And like lots of great practitioners of craft and taste, Bruno has a little of the soup Nazi in him, drops little about who he is to make you feel special. Yes, you can put sugar in your coffee, but if you watch, Bruno is rolling his eyes as you do.
A lockdown queue forms outside and you stand on the street to order. I usually have Bruno make me whatever he wants to make. Sometimes black. Sometimes with milk.
Anyway, Bruno is off to Costa Rica for a month of travel. He goes somewhere every January because in Amsterdam January is dark and grey and business is slow. A good month for baristas to get out of town.
Today I thought, “next January I should take over, be the replacement Bruno.”
I would have to learn coffee (beyond drinking it) and how to operate several systems about which I know nothing, to say nothing of learning at least a little Dutch. Probably learning how to express the right kind of disdain to keep the loyal customers happy would be the toughest trick.
But I will spend that month serving coffee. Maybe by then, people can sit inside again, though in my mind I am in the doorway, as Bruno is now, ready to offer strangers and regulars alike something good, a cup to take with them as they head back off into the drizzle.
I will own the street, know the neighbors. A different kind of life, one connected to espresso grounds and wet brick rather than a computer screen, laptop keys.
Recruit Bruno to the idea? Find the time? Learn what needs to be learned? Could I make that happen with a gun to my head? I think so. Will I pull it off powered by the engine of my own discipline? Against the reality of my other goals and intents? Just to follow the trail of a momentary wish? Less likely.
The happy fantasy, the question: wait, why not? There’s a happy burden in these thoughts. I could not get them elsewhere.