Today was the Day of Exactly 2 Stars below Houston street. I walked down to Sur Le Table to score another FREE cappuccino, a delightful deal that lasts until this upcoming Saturday as part of their Nespresso promotion. The espresso’s good, but it’s one of those ‘pod’ machines where you spend a lot of money on the individual ‘flavors’ to pop in, wasteful in both materials and money. Fortunately I’m not buying the machine, just getting FREE cappuccinos from someone else using it. The name also bothers me. It makes me think NesCafe branched out to espresso. Maybe they did; I’m not about to ‘experience’ the web site. And anyway, any and all questionable factors were blocked out by that one magical word FREE (picture William Wallace shouting it, minus the ‘dom’).
I’d learned about the promotion yesterday when a phalanx of hypercheery bicyclists in shirts that due to unfortunate typography looked like they said ‘Clitz’ (it wasn’t just me, the people with me on both occasions did a double-take and went ‘WHAT DOES THAT SAY?!’) wheeled past and tossed a shirt in my direction. I reflexively grabbed it and one fellow, the cheeriest of them all, said ‘You should TOTALLY go to Sur La Table! The coffee’s deeeeeliiicious! Yaaay!’ He then honked his horn and wheeled off. Again, I am totally serious, there were about 10 people at a go riding bikes down Broadway, honking horns and being aggressively cheerful wearing shirts that appeared to bear slang for lady bits.
We went in and sure enough, free free free caffeine. I almost dropped mine when Mr. Walking On Sunshine right outside the door leaned in and shouted “ISN’T IT GOOOOOD??!?!!” I went back for another taste today, this time walking down one of the cobbled alley-streets. As I explained to the person with me why MST3K movies weren’t released by season due to movie-rights issues, some dude sitting on the steps eating a sandwich makes eye contact with me and waves his hand like ‘no no, I’d prefer not to be bothered. Not now’. I keep walking, finish my sentence, and my brain processes 10 seconds later it was Shia LeBouef. I’d seen Paramount trucks shooting something at Bowery Ballroom yesterday and thought it might be related, but more importantly, I was pissed about the hand-wave.
A), I was walking down the street talking to someone else about something totally non-Shia LeBouef-related. B) I was not staring at him, I was actually checking out the sandwich out of the corner of my eye (as those who visit I Can’t Believe I Ate The Whole Thing know, we like sandwiches). C), had I realized it was Mr. LeBouef (oh man, I am already so sick of typing that last name out), IT WOULD NOT MATTER because I am CLASSY enough to NOT INTERRUPT A MAN EATING HIS SANDWICH. Clearly, if a person is having some outdoor time with a sandwich it is just common courtesy to let them enjoy it, like letting people off the train before getting on or holding the door. How dare he assume I was gauche enough to interrupt sandwich time?!
I fumed about this as we walked into the store trying to look like we were interested in expensive European cooking accessories. We queued up behind a gaggle of young ladies gabbing; one of the sweet ladies working the machines said to the other they were all from Marc Jacobs, and added you had to attach a headshot or photo to your job application there. Ew. The gaggle weren’t supermodels but more pleasant-looking girly types. A woman with her daughter said ‘excuse me’, and I got out of their way. The gaggle started freaking out and sure enough, the lady who’d politely walked by was Kelly Ripa. Not too surprising; she lives in the area and as the person with me pointed out, she’s definitely the target audience for a store of fancy kitchen doodads. As we left we were thanked by the nattiest security fellow I’ve ever seen. An older fellow, he was in a three-piece lavender/gray suit which sounds ridiculous but looked amazing on him.
We walked back up the street and I swore if Mr. LeBouef was still sitting there eating on his sandwich I was going to tell him ‘I am NOT the type of person to interrupt a dude enjoying a sandwich but since you ASSUMED I AM that’s what’s going to happen now’ followed by a litany of annoying questions. Fortunately for him he’d disappeared and been replaced by a French family also enjoying sandwiches. It was a good day for sandwich-enjoying out-of-doors. I walked by and did not pester them, as is good breeding.
