there have been 2 shops in my short life thus far that, for any appreciable length of time, usurped my home as consistent theatre of operations or sitting parlour. one was the 18th street coffeehouse in santa monica and the other was jittery joe’s at five points in athens.

for about 1.5 years i spent almost every sunday evening here or the surrounding environs, watching the clear spring sunday dusks cool over the intersection, dissected by wires and swollen with the rush of lights in the apartments and houses up milledge as the sun disappeared completely, wandering in late summer sunsets, fighting the sane urge to forego a soy latte in the putrefying heat yet stepping into the air conditioning, as the dusk sweat clings my ‘mad butcher’ tshirt to my back, and ordering one up anyway from my boy todd and drinking it in the window until the sun went down, sitting in the breeze on the stoop in front of the laundromat on lumpkin after dropping lwat81 off at 5&10 for work with my notebook on my lap until the autumn chill set in and i took my coffee into the laundromat until full night before going back to jittery joe’s, where, when the night was dark, the glass would turn such a reflective black on the insides that the warm little banker’s lamps on the tables and the generally low glow would create such a dissociative vessel that upon leaving, after a few hours, my stomach would sink at the emptiness that claims the night air in north georgia, as if the powers of the coffee were only effective within the warmth of the shop, and, immediately without the effects of the caffeine, i drove back to lwat81’s little duplex disoriented to cook a warm meal to ring in the week.

like 18th street, where i learned that i could only write in .5mm mechanical pencil, i cultivated a pleasant writing habit of seeking out one of the extremely small round tables, which were fairly low, and pulling my chair as close as possible so that the table post was between my legs and the edge of the table was almost against my stomach, and i would spread out my notebook to write as though i had a wooden lap. around the room were books for sale, a good selection of penguin paperbacks, vineland in hardcover, a jgballard text, and a number of large format ‘how-to-garden’ and ‘how-to-fix-shit-around-your-house’ books i would look up from my writing often to look around at people, look around at books, look at myself in the steamed over glass, or get up to use the bathroom outside, where i would perhaps make a lap around the building, peek in 5&10 to see if i could catch an undetected glimpse of lwat81 working, survey the skies, and breath some dark air. the atmosphere changed over time, a new owner came on, slicked it up a little bit, got rid of the round communal couch in the middle of the room (which was presumably sent back to the seraglio from whence it came), and cut through the clutter a bit, and although i liked the clutter, i didnt mind because it told me what jittery joe’s was, and still is to me, after i can no longer physically lay claim to it, it was that intersection at five points, it was the sky arcing all the way over lumpkin, it was the lights of the greek houses up milledge, all seen through and reflected in the glass roll-up doors, and it had clearly been all of these things even when the building was still a service station, and would be even when it was no longer jittery joe’s.

coffee, cafe, coffeeshop, review, café

Jittery Joe’s Five Points

1210 South Millledge
Athens, Georgia 30605


soymilk: extra charge
wifi: free access