Cafe Tableaux again breakfasts in the lobby of the motel, this time amidst eastern outliers of the Sturgis rally. This crew includes a fat man laying out the reasons he is fat for his fat wingman. “We got a gift certificate to one of them boot camp things from my son. We did it for the two weeks. I was in the best shape of my life for that two weeks. But you know how busy we get. My wife and I just really need to start cooking food at home. It is too easy to just stop on the way home and pick up something from CiCi’s.”

Thos and JHT discuss the modern conception of ‘too busy.’ It seems to these tableauxists that the hindrances that create the feeling of busy-ness are in fact mostly worthless endeavours. How can you be too busy to find decent food, when eating food is pretty much your only function as an organism? Is being too busy to finish the Great American Novel because you are running a futile coffeeshop website different from being too busy to cook quinoa and frozen carrots because the teevee in your kitchen is too small to get the full effect of the season finale of Project Runway? Thos imparts a self-help maxim he discovered recently: Replace ‘I’m too busy to….‘ with ‘It’s not a priority for me to…‘ and you will realize what a loser you’ve become. JHT grunts in acknowledgement.

A planned stop is taken in Sioux Falls, SD. Thos laments the area’s confusing place names: Rapid City, Sioux City, Sioux Falls, Cedar Falls, Cedar Rapids. They head to their researched first choice for coffee, Coffea, and though repelled by the neighborhood, the character of the place, and the ilk of the clientele Thos deigns to take a leak in their bathroom, whilst JHT photographs the grounds of the facility for a tableau. They rendez-vous in the parking lot, JHT beaming about his ‘great snaps’, and Thos claming that, “while you were nerding out over your photos, I was nerding into this Georgia girl’s tittays!” To prevent JHT from going into Coffea for verification, Thos claims he will draw the interior longhand; upon JHT’s later request for the drawing, Thos admits his realization that he “can’t draw.”

Driving circuitously to their alternate destination, CT discusses its discomfort with the billboards glossily advertising the history of Native American oppression that have littered I-90, just miles from the boundaries of the Crow Nation:
JHT: “Are Native Americans pissed about the billboards about Little Big Horn?”
Thos: “Maybe it reminds them that they won.”
JHT: “They haven’t exactly won in the bigger picture.”
Thos: “Are they more pissed that we ran them off all this land and then didn’t use it for anything?”
JHT: “Would they be less pissed if we filled it with Post apartments and Six Flagses?”
Thos: “Why don’t they move out of the depressing town by the highway and into the hundreds of square miles of empty reservation land?”
JHT: “You have a lot of balls to ask that question considering the hell you live in.”
Thos: “I’m trying to do the right thing! You saw the shame on my face when buying apples from that Indian chick at Lep-Re-Kon.”
JHT: “I wouldn’t worry about it. A dude who owns a leprechaun is more enfranchised than you are!….and by the way, dude, ‘Indian chick’ is not the preferred nomenclature — ‘American Indian chick’, please.”

Thos fumbles through JHT’s shoebox full of compact discs; out of the hundreds he selects a compilation of Waylon Jennings’s questionably greatest hits and inserts it into the dashboard system for the tenth time on the journey.
Thos: “Do you ever think there is enough shit already?”
JHT: “Example.”
Thos: “I have more songs on my entertainment devices that I could ever listen to in the remainder of my life, if I listened to them end to end. Compounding that problem is that I listen to the same Proclaimers album twice a day. I’ve probably seen Memento fifteen times.”
JHT: “Here’s something for one of your self-help books: think of how much time you’ve spent meticulously organizing all of your media files into folders; if you haven’t killed yourself because of that colossal time-waste you’re sure to make it to your natural demise.”
Thos: “I guess. So why do they keep making music, movies, books, tv shows, or art? There is enough top notch stuff already existing to keep everyone content and placid for their entire lives.”
JHT: “Why do you bother writing tableaux?”
Thos: “Because the most perfect cafe tableau has not yet been recorded! On the day that there are enough excellent tableaux to keep everyone happy forever, I will log off the site, delete all the accounts and spend the rest of my life free soloing Devil’s Tower.”
JHT: “Let’s listen to Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way again.”

As they coast into a strip mall parking lot JHT realizes the odd looks he has gotten at each stop stem from the dried snot-rockets tracing down his flannel, deposited there by hours of blowing his nose into the wind, sans tissue, paper bag, or even sock. They have arrived at their original second choice for coffee in Sioux Falls, Black Sheep, which the internet said was “no Dunn Brothers!”

Cafe Tableaux. On The Road. Summer 2012
« Chapter 5: The Fix | Chapter 7: Black Sheep »

coffee, cafe, coffeeshop, review, café

Coffea Roasterie

2318 South Louise Ave
Sioux Falls, South Dakota 57106
http://coffearoasterie.com/cafe