Walt Lockley - Travel Pieces

favorite godforsaken coffee shop (Phoenix)

written January 2000

Pros: cheap food; Beat atmosphere; easy getaway
Cons: you have to be in the right mood

Few places are unimprovable. I wouldn't touch the New Yorker
with a wet paintbrush if you gave me $50,000. ($55,000 is
another matter, but let's not talk about the things I'd do for
specific dollar amounts.) Maybe it's insane, but I feel about the
New Yorker the way some people feel about redwood forests: it
stands as a precious, fragile, unrecognized resource and we
should all be willing to chain ourselves in front of huffing, snorting
bulldozers should the dark day of its proposed demolition ever
come.

The New Yorker is a small, retro, painfully classic coffee shop on
the northwest corner of 27th Avenue and Northern, just west of
I-17. From repeated visits my guess is their main clientel is
construction workers and retirees. The prices are lowish --
especially if you watch the chalkboard for the daily special -- and
the food is a good solid value. Somehow I always end up with a
greasy, buttery, wonderous, fatal Rueben with cheese and
onions. I would guarantee that it's shabby but clean but in reality
I can't guarantee any such thing, so maybe you'd better just go
for the peach cobbler and tea or coffee. It's the atmospherics
you're here for anyway.

By day the New Yorker looks like a cool cave behind smoked
glass. That's what brought me in to begin with. By night if you're
sitting at the stop light you can clearly see each patron and each
ragged light fixture inside. Step in under the sagging cracked
waterstained awnings. Seat yourself. One of the waitresses will
notice and douse her cigarette and amble over. Luxuriate in the
ripped vinyl booth covers, bounce on the sprung springs, finger
gloss long worn down by so many other fingers. Puzzle over the
mystery of the misplaced lettering job on the big glass panels
facing the street. Mentally estimate how much it would take to
get this place fixed up and erase the long years of partial neglect
that make it beautiful and mysterious. My guess is that you could
straighten this place out for about $55,000.

But I wouldn't change a thing. Not even the Shell-No-Pest-Strip
light fixtures on the outside, a few degrees askew. This is
nature's perfect coffee shop. And it illustrates something about
Phoenix that I really like, something about randomness, something
about the dry grid of streets, something about denying the
passage of time.

Old guy one: "They were travelling at a rate of 7 miles in 5 hours
on that highway, now how many miles per hour is that? Can you
tell me?" Old guy two, after a math-induced pause: "No, I can't.
But I can tell you that Floyd coming up right behind them was
travelling at 17 miles per hour." Old guy one: "And that's faster."
Old guy two: "Yes, that's faster." Old guy one: "Oh, there were
some agitated motorists out there, I'm sure."

Open until 9.