Up two escalators made by Schindler, polished stainless steel with dark gritty grooves running along each step vertical to my feet. The cafe expanse of the cloistered cafe rolls out before me, Roman white columns slice into the tiles below, littered with flowered decals and topped with crudely-shapen leaves which curl to meet the soiled off-white ceiling above. An intrusive light brown air duct intersects the common eating area above, drawing air from the roof or one of the other four floors and disperses it evenly over the patrons below. A multiplicity of forest green signs lead from escalator to the entrance to the cafe: “No outside food or beverages. Barnes and Noble café tables are reserved for our café customers only. Additional seating located on the 4th floor,” “Café tables are for our cafe customers. Please enjoy the seating in other parts of the store,” ” and then again inside the cordoned-off cafe area: “This area of our café is reserved for café customers only. Thank you.” Emphasis is placed on the igrec above the “e”: café not cafe. It is a place of prestige, a place of privilege. More than anything, it is a place of business.
The lights above, shaped like ill-informed, halved gel capsules shoot down countenanced rays of bitter halogen light. The tiles below my feet white and black, framed with dark black grout, bespeak of a corporation cognizant of the fact that although a bookstore, tiles are easier to clean, black grout easier to hide the dirt and grime collected over years of patterned trapsings by bookstore patrons. On the walls, cardboard posters of “great” novels: The Natural by Bernard Malamud, Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck, Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell Jr., The Great Gadsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. They look cheap, stand askew on the wallpapered walls: large forest green stripes interspersed with light teal and dark gray stripes, the bottom covered in a dark wood siding grooved with gold bands at the top. This is a mass-produced cafe occupying a chain bookstore. As with any successful corporations, its surroundings are not left to chance. Each color, each poster, each seat cushion and tabletop has been chosen unquestionably from a set of pre-made choices that would fit the corporate image, the “feel” of the store. High along the walls, ironic billboards of written masters stand plastered to the wall with cheap poster glue and thin poster paper cut into even, manageable sections for those that rolled them on. Singer, Kafka, Neruda, Tagore, James, Wilde, Twain, Shaw, Hardy, Dickenson: all are depicted striking intellectual poses, distant gazes peering over the endless swarms of people moving in and out of their presence. The irony abounds from the simple fact that this place is far from an intellectual hub of cultural activity. It is a corporation donning the wigs of writing masters to sell a product, further an image. I turn to the right, see Nabakov, Joyce and Shelley plastered in a hidden recess to the dirty wall. Shelley has a “First Aid for Choking” sign on her breasts and is side-lit by a neon red “Exit” sign on her right, luminescent against the bright white door. I have had enough and I turn to walk away. A sign greets me as I exit and step on to the escalator: “Treat yourself. Enjoy Starbucks.” I am gone.
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