I’m meeting Laurie and Iris downtown this morning, so I figured I’d catch some wireless action at the central library. No dice–they don’t open until ten. But I spied a Free Wi-Fi decal at the Juan Valdez cafe at 5th and Pike, which opened last year.
It turns out that the Valdez cafes are essentially an ad campaign for Fair Trade coffee. Fine by me. They’re also a little weirder than you would expect, with mod furniture and untranslated Spanish terms on the board. (I’m having a cafe cubano.) I’m sitting on a salmon-colored padded chair that is arranged in a zig-zag pattern with five other such chairs, facing the rest of the restaurant as if we are on an episode of a dating show. They always pick the guy with the laptop, right?
Additional props to the fact that they seem to be playing an R.E.M. mixtape containing many good album tracks and few overplayed hits.
I had a dream about the Juan Valdez cafe a few months ago. In my dream, they had a huge wall-sized mural of the landscape from the beginning of the video for Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun.”
This was, I think, by way of a Beavis and Butthead episode…
Was there anyone else in there while you were there? Everytime my bus goes by on the way to work (which should be primetime coffee drinking time) it’s empty.
Yes, I had to take one of the bachelor chairs because all the tables were full. But they all opened up while I was in there. It doesn’t have a very inviting street presence; you can’t see the counter from the street, which strikes me as a big problem for customer conversion.
Found web site
Bookmarked web site
secure in knowing there will be MUCH fun reading archives
Thanks for sharing your wit and experiences. I look forward to more.
Does Laurie know you were sitting in the bachelor chairs?
I feel very worldly and cosmopolitan when I order a cardamomo (sp?) @ JV’s, hee hee.