Once I joined Cafe Tableaux, I started thinking about some of the coffeehouses that I’ve visited in my hometown of Brooklyn. Not many of them stick out. The one I decided was the most memorable (mainly because it’s the most recent one I’ve visited I’m sure I’ll think of the others eventually) is Gorilla Coffee. Gorilla Coffee is situated on a corner in Park Slope, Brooklyn. This neighborhood has a lot to offer people who like to go out but don’t enjoy the high energy nightclub Manhattan kind of scene. It’s fairly “trendy,” populated with people that have come from small towns all over America in search of the New York city life.

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I get nervous flying in a plane. Unfortunately my time in Austin is always bookended by flights and usually the time is so short that I do not have a day in Austin that I am not also on an airplane. After traveling more frequently over the past few years I have also noted that taking a coffee beverage before flying does not increase my ease and does not allow me to focus on my breathing. In fact, I cannot even peel my face away from the little portal window watching the ground plane and calibrating my inner gyroscope, even when we are flying through a mile thick cloud cover and the landing gear come out before I can see the city below (or dear god if I am in the last seat in an MD-88 looking out the window at nothing but engine waiting ceaselessly for it to either fall off or burst into flames) nor slow my heart rate enough to think rationally about what is going on. But when was chance ever rational. I still plaster my face against the window even if I had tea, or orange juice, or even if I want coffee so bad and want to go to the little Jo’s next to my hotel so bad, but I just keep my face against the auto window as we cruise past. I snapped out of it this week and could not fight the urge to attend the little Jo’s on South Congress.

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When I heard the b’hoys at Page Southerland Page talking about AMLI, Ill be honest, I had no clue what they were talking about. It was not until I saw their fetid property on the side of I85 up near Shallowford Road on my way to Harmony Vegetarian that I picked up on what they might be. I saw them as poised to scoop up some of the market share that Post Properties might be relinquishing in the area of superstrasse fronting apartment tanks. But what do you do when someone or something is not all bad?

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