Everytime I think of Corona it always takes me back to a particular time in my life where I was spending most of my days spitballing exactly what I wanted to do with myself. My cohort and witness to all of this is the author of the previous entry: http://shaneguyexternal.blogspot.com/2009/01/king-corona-in-tribute.html and fellow Corona devotee $hane Guy.
Both of us would spend what had to be at least 4 days a week sitting by the window inside sipping endless drinks (his usual coke and pack of dunhills that later grew to incorporate Cafe con leches and the occasional Bass Ale, me with my double espresso with lemon, water, and Cuesta Rey robusto # 27) and wonder why girls werent digging us and when would we get to go out and live our lives and starve for art... in other words blah blah blah blah.
But those werent idealic times. We werent crying over spilled milk. We werent those cliched self indulgent teenagers that thought they were exempt from the whole current of life. That they were unique and that the whole of existense centered on their shit. Quite the contrary, we knew we were smarter than 90% of our peers, and that we had shit to say. We also knew that we were unique, that we were better than the schmuck on the laptop and bluetooth two tables down, telling his fellow piece of trash on the other end of the line how much money he scored on his current business deal and how trashed they got at channelside. That we wanted nothing to do with him or anyone like that.
I cannot vouche much for $hane. To his credit he was born with a filter and he kept a large amount of his shit to himself, slowly and strategically letting it leak into our conversations. As for me, I would spew endless shit into the air: personal diatribes, half baked thoughts, quasi-offensive somewhat insensitive and rather rude remarks on a wide variety of topics that seemed to be plucked out of the magical air that got trapped behind that beautiful pane of glass that lined the north end of the cafe facing the street. $hane's experiance was different than mine, and from I could gather in 2006, he felt like a robinson crusoe even amongst the public.
As for me I always somewhere else. The grass was always greener, and everytime I arrived at Corona I was always wishing I was somewhere else. Somewhere that was better then here. The irony is now that I really wish I could be at Corona. I spent so much time there, and I worked some much shit with myself. I made aloud so many thoughts, ironed out so many feelings, exhausted myself of myself that I was ready to do something else. I am in need of that again. Maybe it was just the nicotine and the caffeine coursing through my empty stomach into my bloodstream, but when I left that place I felt energized and focused, all my ducks were in a row. Like a therapy high except it always accessable and cheaper.
$hane could tell you the name of everyone there, how good the coke tasted that day, who made the made the best coffee drink... shit he knows what the upstairs looks like! I on the other hand couldnt tell you name of a single individual there besides shane. Nor could I discern the difference in the cigars I smoked, only if they were shit or they were good. Everything I drank ate or smoked was standard issue and i never changed it. I was to busy with other things. So I guess maybe my experiance was slightly more existential.
So what to write after admitting all of this. What other thing should I write about than that magical window of time I got to tick away the hours of the day spending all of money on hummus and olive salads and over elaborate espresso/milk drinks. The truth is that is my Corona. I dont go there anymore because I dont live in Tampa and when I do visit there is always something oddly drained about it. I was there when things in my life carried some sort of emotional weight. Nowadays I have experianced a lot more and have done the things I only talked about it when I was a regular.
But mark my words, there is still more work to be done with myself, and work to be done in general. I will return to that little hole in the wall on the southside of 7th, get buzzed on shots of caffeine and nicotine, and descend to the streets to change your shit. mark my words.
1 comment:
(salutes)
Something I didn't touch on in my article was the early days, when we would plan weird photoshoots and cover the table-paper in mysterious notes that had people wondering what the fuck we were on about.
In that sense, we can't recapture those days - we're both less green than we were then... you had a good point there.
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