Eventually, this newsletter will consist of more form and function, but as I get this project off the ground, my first five posts will highlight my first five days in South Bend from my own perspective.
This is day two of five.
My second day began with the scraping of ice from an overnight rainstorm off the windows of my car…
…before heading to Zen Cafe to start my morning.
I started working primarily from cafes a few years ago when I unintentionally fell into a freelance consulting career in the rapidly gentrifying urban core of Detroit. After about a year of hopping from place-to-place for meetings and work sessions in Detroit, I then took a job that had me traveling all over the country for six months followed by another one that had me traveling the world for fourteen. At first, I was pleasantly surprised by the consistent availability of quirky yet trendy cafes with reliable wifi, reasonable coffee, and ample outlets everywhere I went. However, eventually the mind-numbing similarities started to wear on me and I adopted a more critical lens.
On a positive note, I have to admit that the underlying homogeneity bred a certain level of comfort and convenience for me. Regardless of where I was in the world, I could rely on digital cues from branding, images, location and customer reviews that told me all I need to know about where I could go for a conducive work environment and decent cup of coffee. Whenever I haven’t had to resort to the sterility of a Starbucks or the community dining room of a Panera Bread, I’ve been happy.
That being said, I think we should be demanding and striving for something different. The writing is on the wall and I don’t mean those Instagramable neon signs or spray-painted stencils that we love so dearly.🙃 No, we really are reaching a point of dilution in our quest to be so unmistakably unique. I mean, see for yourself in this video focused on the "Brooklyn minimalist" cafe aesthetic taking over the world, remind yourself about the typical correlation between a new coffee shop opening and a community gentrifying, check out this well-traveled article on The Unbearable Sameness of Cities or just nerd out about cities branding and marketing themselves into irrelevance with me.
What I think we need are more places like Zen Cafe. Places that are community-oriented, locally-owned and willing partners with other local businesses. I was lucky enough to have this article about social infrastructure shared with me yesterday (thanks Sam Smouha!) and, at their very best, cafes are third places that provide “a welcoming space” that is “likely to draw [you] out of your home and into areas where you would establish social contacts.” From what I’ve gathered, that’s what Zen offers for a variety of people here. That’s why I’m happy to support them while I’m calling South Bend home.
My day ended by navigating a subtle blizzard through the nearly empty streets of downtown South Bend.
…but that was after I spent my evening at the local comedy club’s Tuesday Open Mic.
Yeah, a weeknight stand-up comedy open mic on the outskirts of a small city in Indiana...I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my time either! It actually reminded me of when Kelly and I ended up at a hip-hop open mic on Monday night in Bismarck, North Dakota during our road trip from Detroit to Seattle. 😊
Truthfully, I think that local comedians are the underappreciated salt of the communal earth when trying to gain a grounded understanding of a community’s general sentiment. You want to hear about a diverse array of individual problems, community issues and community happenings? Well, a considerable part of their performance is dependent upon staying tuned-in and relevant to what’s going on. I was all ears.
I don’t remember many of their jokes because there were a lot of works-in-progress and the guy sitting next to me would incessantly laugh before every punchline😒, but it’s safe to say that I was grateful to see South Bend beyond the bubble of young, white entrepreneurial changemakers that I tend to associate myself with by default. That’s the threshold of the comfort zone that I think my upbringing did a pretty effective job of reinforcing; a comfort zone that I’ve spent the better part of the last decade deconstructing prior to this trip.
Oh yeah, I also matched with a woman might have been the only other non-comedian in attendance that night two days later on Tinder. TBD on whether or not that story makes the cut for my end-of-the-month stand-up routine. 🙆♂️