Elegy For Not All That Much

"We have an outsized relationship to the small spaces and places in our lives." On opening and closing cafes, reckoning with failure, and the places we go.

We have an outsized relationship to the small spaces and places in our lives.

It’s a curious predilection, our affinity for the quaint and gentle. Little alcoves of harmony, rooms in houses we’ve lived in. Bar stools and chairs and plush leather couches in lobbies.

We can ascribe so much sentimentality to these little things.

In my life there have been so many. Back in the days where bar work and late night finishes were my normal nocturnal habit, I used to long for the glary aperture of a window stool at a little cafe on St. Kilda road. I would roll out of bed adaze, often still a little delirious, and find my way to this stool, brought into coherency by the startlingly disinterested and impatient tone of the staff. I’d order a coffee, frequently terrible, and  ham cheese tomato toastie, a unique version featuring molten pockets of fondue-esque milk solid amalgams, spicy tomato kasundi, and bread that danced the line of bracingly crisp and jarringly burnt with such skill as to suggest the daredevil heart of the mad scientist who would prepare them.

The bench, barely wide enough to support the length of an Age, my coffee and sandwich thoughtfully composed around the perimeter. With every bite, sip and word I’d veer closer into the land of the living, a little ritual I undertook approximately 30-40 times, never once attracting the slightest suggestion of familiarity from the staff. In fact, my little ritual engendered the sort of familial apathy reserved for your stoner anti-vaxxer cousin at Christmas. They would interact, but only enough to keep me at bay and discourage further discourse. Perfect, really. For me, a person burdened with the need to make others feel good, it was a satiating change of pace to be so utterly unappreciated. It really was heaven.

The inverse, a seat I call ‘the throne”. The highest possible mantle from which a Melburnian can perch, a lofty seat so esteemed that only one may sit there, and on the occasional evening he is out, a chosen few make keep warm.

Along the marble bar at Di Stasio Citta, from whence one can keep equal tabs on the hushed powerbrokings of politicians, gangland figures and landed CBD gentry alike, sits the man whose name adorns the sign at Citta and whose hands adorn the doors at Cafe Di Stasio St Kilda.

Always jovial, always in the midst of an extremely important conversation, Ronnie Di Stasio holds court with an air of gravitas that his contemporaries across the road on Spring Street could only dream of. It is a completely  majestic position, replete with silver service canapes, a fully stocked bar waiting to do his bidding, and a seemingly endless guestlist, from musicians to artists to supermodels. A few times, I’ve sat there, underneath the Reno Rekkie flicker, and in those neon lit moments, a martini in hand, I’ve touched the hand of god. And he said “saluti”.

The sushi bar at Kenzan. The bench corner at Slater Street. Slumped in a fretful delirium on a Nova Bar couch, trying to choreograph the ideal Discount Monday schedule. All little spots I’ve loved and coveted, little moments I can treasure, cling to, recede into when the stress of this world gets too close to me. I’ve leaned into the feeling of these places, awash in the synesthesia that a sense of place and belonging offers. This, I would guess, is what it feels like to be truly loved for all that you are, no misgivings or false pretenses, just embraced; warts, creaky tables and all.

My mistake was trying to create one for myself. I will speculate on why. My love for these places, and something I think informs the love others too feel for the places they escape to, is just that; escapism. What I hadn’t factored into the equation of creating a space, a world unto itself, entirely suited to myself and the things I enjoy, is that unfortunately, I don’t really like myself all that much. A profound realization at any stage of one’s life, but a particularly harrowing one to reach at the end of a long, difficult road of self discovery and exploration. Oh, and a really expensive road, too. To explain, I opened a cafe. 

In my vagabond days, gallivanting from table to table and plate to plate across Europe, I would keep a little Moleskine notebook. Black and stately, I bought it from Selfridge’s, and it was my prized possession. On train trips and bus rides I would scribble away, poems, thoughts, drawings, ideas. Floor plans. Recipes. Menu ideas. I always wanted my own place, at first a restaurant, and latterly (perhaps informed by the incessant decline of anything approaching the idea of financial security), a small coffee shop. Across pages and in margins, dozens of names and ideas, in differing imaginative fonts, of ideas for cafes.

A few I recall; “Alphabet City ''. “Arts & Letters Kitchen” “North By Northwest”. “Bureau”. All pretty good, and I should add, all still guarded by the weighted blanket of my own delusion, so no you may not use any of them. Long story short, after wasted months set to rot in the feted, confused rancor of the pandemic, I found a location I liked and could afford. A beautiful old shop front, close to the manicured frontage of Melbourne University on Parkville’s Royal Parade. 

An idea from my little catalogue of fantasies sprung forth, as they often did. The pristine and historic location. The proximity to the city’s great place of learning, and the sea of ambitious and well-read high achievers within. The relative lack of amenities in the varied and underserved Parkville community. A corner shop with a literary lean, selling good coffee and comestible delights. It just had to be called Bureau.

The idea was fully formed. Writing the business plan was as simple as writing down the letters in my own name, the ideas gliding out from my fingertips like a bracingly cold, glacial martini from a mixing glass. It was truly a sight to behold, the absolute bullshit I conjured, but I was a believer. I truly had a vision, something many venues don’t, and an ethos all of my own. I never struggled to answer a question, because the answer was always whatever I wanted it to be. As an inside child. I had a voracious appetite for the written word. I loved to read and draw, but it was news agencies where I felt most alive and connected to the world. The ornate tiers and rack of glossy magazines, each one full of infinite windows outward, were my idea of a good time. The old Borders at Chadstone and its gigantic selection of imported and up-to-date magazines was my equivalent of Disneyland. A lingering predilection for avenue-straddling european newstands, and the inherent links between your daily coffee and the daily news, and an idea was born too strong to deny.

Bureau Provisions & Periodicals, a sort of hipster-ised newsagent, with fresh daily pastries, sandwiches, daily essentials and curated magazines, papers and zines. Really, what could go wrong?

To be candid, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, very little did. A small advertising and letterbox campaign tapped into the neglected Parkville community, hungry for a hub. In the lead up to our opening, I started to receive suspiciously prescient instagram followers from Melbournne’s online food mafia. Through very little effort, there was a buzz, and when I finally threw open the doors on a sunny October morning, the embrace was warm and constant. We were busy. We were liked. We were appreciated.

Almost immediately we filled a niche; older Parkville residents to whom securing a physical copy of The Age of the Fin Review had become bothersome. The younger families who populated the area immediately gravitated to the filter coffee and pastries, creating a core revenue stream that gave the business a core. At lunch, students, teachers, nurses and nearby office workers would flock for our daily sandwiches. We were selling out every day and trying to keep up with demand.

Good Food, then Broadsheet, all manner of digital tastemakers featured us, culminating in a bizarre interview with a French high fashion magazine, which had positioned me as some sort of Greta Thunberg-esque freedom fighter rebelling against the Murdoch media monopoly. And while not strictly true, I did derive a certain thrill from cordially informing interested patrons that “we do not stock The Herald Sun here”. 

In time, it was a place for regulars, who would come to experience my space as much as they did for the utility of the wares I sold. They would come to be in this space, surrounded by my intended ambience, to hear the music I liked and flick through the magazines I enjoy. It was a hang out, and it made people happy. Glowing reviews, praise, even hand-drawn sketches of my shop. I had created for others the exact feeling I always chase in a place, and a sense of place. It was all happening, and I was busy and felt successful. Suddenly delusions of financial success started to grow, and I began planning for the future. Look at me, a regular titan of industry.

To say the bubble burst would be a falsehood. The bubble never burst. In fact, the bubble would likely still remain intact today had I continued to nourish and protect the bubble, feeding it in all its gaseous glory. The truth is that the bubble I created just didn’t make me feel the way that the places outlined at the start of this article do. It was a nice little life, something I’d cultivated and created, and it was a reason to be proud. Over time and repetition, it just started to feel different, then challenging, then wrong. Ultimately the decision to not renew the lease was incredibly difficult. I felt I’d failed. I had, really. I’d let down my regulars, who truly loved what I’d made. They loved me. That’s a particularly powerful thing to walk away from, the pride and self esteem relationships like that can offer.

Over my tenure I did try to fall in love with my own creation. On warm amber mornings I’d sit out the front on Royal Parade, watching the day develop through the trees like 70mm film flickering in a reel. I tried to make the most of being so close to the university grounds, and stroll through them after work, soaking in the echoing songs of the misspent academia of my youth.  I made connections, friendships, and tried to celebrate little milestones, but a malaise of anhedonia seemed to coat it all, a thin film of inescapable apprehension about whether this was right for me. It did feel cowardly to walk away rather than fight it out. It felt like I was losing either way. I'm lost now. For these reasons I know I shouldn’t let run through my head; you lost time , you lost money, you lost a lot of yourself trying something that ultimately didn’t work the way you wanted. But there's a sweeter sense of loss too; I’ve lost something beautiful that I created, and the people that loved it have too. And I guess the only solace is knowing that this beautiful thing would have never done any good sitting in an old Moleskine notebook.

So now I embark on new chapters and challenges, unsure of my direction, but better prepared to walk it. I recede to the refuge of the places I’ve known where I find peace, tranquility, transfixed by the clink of a bar spoon mixing a martini at my favourite stool. The smell of burnt coffee and old men mumbling nefarious lewdities on a Yarraville cafe sidewalk. The welcoming squelch of a leather armchair in a theater’s waiting room, all little things I cherish in these colder days, warmer for the knowledge that for a while, I made someone feel that way too.