Kiva Han Countdown: 23 days (yesterday's post)

I wonder where Kiva Han gets their baked goods. That chocolate chip muffin I had yesterday was delicious. Spongy, chocolatey, but well-formed enough to rip off chunks and dunk them in the frothy milk of my cappuccino. Yum. A perfect complement to sitting and staring out the window and thinking about math, too.

I met up with a friend there and then we caught a 54 down to the South Side for dinner, and then a concert out in Mt. Oliver. It got me thinking about how there used to be shows here, randomly, from time to time. I have a distinct memory of walking by one a few years ago when I was still newish to town. It couldn't have been an all-out rock show, with noise blaring into the street. But then again, maybe it could. Would businesses on the street be able to complain if there's a rock 'n roll band blasting tunes out of a coffee shop at 8:00 pm on a Saturday, say? I wouldn't really think so, as long as it's not too loud.

This is kind of untapped territory around here, I think. I've heard of shows going on at various coffee shops around town—I even went to one last year at Commonplace in Squirrel Hill and learned that they have (had?) a weekly acoustic set on Tuesday nights—and have heard "you should have been there" stories of years past, like TV on the Radio playing at Quiet Storm or stuff like that. But for all of that chatter, there aren't often coffee shop shows that are well publicized or promoted or attended. There's a thread about KH on a local message board where a Pgh music promoter recalled setting up many shows here in the past, and a musician friend of mine remembers playing here once or twice years ago.

Hmm … maybe there should be some kind of "last day blowout show" here, to celebrate Kiva Han's place in the community. I think that would be fun!

Kiva Han Countdown: 24 days (yesterday's post)

Just a quick stopoff for a cappuccino last night on my way from campus to my apartment. It had been alternately pouring/drizzling all day, and I thought I could wait out the rain before walking home, but … no dice. Luckily, I had an umbrella with me.

Funny story about that umbrella. I used to own a small, black, popup umbrella. It was even in my possession as of a week or so ago. Then, I carried it with me to Kiva Han some afternoon while it rained, sat there for a couple hours, and completely forgot to take it with me when I left because it was no longer raining. It's as if my brain said, "Don't need this anymore!" I'm not really accustomed to carrying an umbrella around anyway; I'm surprised I thought of bringing one at all, since I usually just forget I own one and say, "Well, guess I'm gonna get wet today."

I went back a couple days later to see if someone had found it there because, well, I kept forgetting about it because it hadn't rained in a few days. I asked the barista (I really should learn names, right? I just feel weird asking …) if they had a lost and found and if they had a small black umbrella. She looked around and said, "Nope, but you can take one of these spares," and showed me a pile of three unclaimed umbrellas. So, unbeknownst to me, Kiva Han apparently operates some kind of umbrella exchange operation. It's like "leave a penny, take a penny", but with rain protection instead of tiny pieces of legal tender.

I found myself walking into KH last night with that medium-sized, white umbrella in hand. When asked how it was working out, I replied honestly: "It's a lot better than no umbrella." So, do you need an umbrella? I can leave one there for you …

Kiva Han Countdown: 25 days (yesterday's post)

I keep managing to not write these short blurbs until the day after. Oh well. This post corresponds to the unique day where the number of days left in Kiva Han's existence is also the day of the month. My mathematical mind felt that was important to note.

I stopped by yesterday evening around 8 pm for a cup of tea. This time, I went with the liquorice peppermint herbal. It was surprisingly delicious, considering I usually don't like liquorice. I played a couple of games of Outfox with my friend and then did some work. Not much to say, but it was fun and productive, a good combination.

At one point I heard strains of Bob Dylan's voice wafting over my ears, and I strained them to finaly identify the song as "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". Then I heard faint music coming from the speakers out in the other room. At that point, I realized the guy at the table behind me had his earbuds playing music so loudly I could hear them and identify the song. Turn it down, dude. You're ruining your ears.

The sign was gone from the counter! I had momentary hope that maybe Kiva Han isn't closing after all. That was dashed, of course, later on when I overheard this exchange:

Customer: Are you guys closing?
Barista: Yeah, on February 19th.
Customer: Oh. I meant, like, tonight.
Barista: Oh right. At 10.

By the by, isn't liquorice a weird looking weird? LIQUOR ICE. Weird.

Kiva Han Countdown: 26 days (yesterday's post)

I stopped by for a quick cup of tea on my way to the Southside for a concert because I was feeling like a little congestion/cold was creeping up on me. I got a green tea and sat in the corner table by the window to read a book. The barista wrapped the string of the tea bag around the handle of my travel mug so it wouldn't disappear into the depths, only to be retrievable by pinching my fingers into its boiling lava. Smart move, my friend.

I hadn't been sitting there all that long when I heard a little skittering sound coming from above and descending. I momentarily thought it was a tree branch scraping the window or something, but then realized there aren't any tree branches within reach of that window. A split second later, a piece of ice or two landed on the side of my table and bounced to the floor. I heard laughter and giggling coming from above. Luckily, there was no damage to my book or other effects, so I kinda chuckled to myself and leaned over to look up. There is a tiny gap along that window/wall wherein a customer sitting on the second floor can potentially (or actually) spill something and have it come sailing down to the first floor with only gravity on its side and a floor in its way. A young lady happened to be leaning over to look downward at that moment, and she giggled out, "Sorry about that!", and I said, "No problem!, and waved back. And that was that.

The strange thing is … that is the second time that has happened to me there! Same table. Same situation. Except the last time, I think someone spilled their entire iced coffee on the floor up there, and it dripped down slowly onto the side of the table for a short while and hit a book or two I had with me. I'm sure that person was more focused on cleaning up their own spillage on their own stuff, so I didn't really begrudge them not acknowledging the fact that I got hit, too. Oh well. This time, it seemed to be just ice water … well, actually, just ice. So, NBD.

Side note: they were playing a lot of Blink 182 while I was there. I only know this because I recognized "All The Small Things" and then the rest of the songs sounded exactly like that one. Now, I only recognized that song because my college roommate used to play it a lot and sing along in his humorous, fake emo voice. He was very good at imitating that whiny, nasal tone. A little too good. I think he secretly liked that song, but he also introduced me to Interpol and Radiohead and Modest Mouse, so it's all good.

Kiva Han Countdown: 27 days

I crossed two items off my Kiva Han bucket list today! (See this post for what I mean.) A friend of mine gchatted me during the day and said "nice blogging" and met me here in the afternoon. When I got here, he said he was just talking with the barista and mentioned this here blog series, so I guess folks will know about it somehow. Cool.

I didn't quite feel like settling down and working, so I looked through the shelf of board games while waiting for my coffee. The stack was falling over after I plucked one out from the middle, and I had to do some careful rearranging to keep the whole pile from toppling onto the ground and making a big mess and din. I settled on the game Outfox. It looked like an easy-to-learn game, was playable by three people, and the time component said 10-30 minutes. Perfect. I went back to our table, unpacked the box. In the process, two balls of paper (one a ripped-up brown napkin and one a pink receipt) fell onto the floor and I said, "Oh well". I also discovered that there were two rules sheets, one entirely in French and one entirely in Spanish. Between me (French) and my other friend (Spanish), we pieced together the rules and started to play amongst the three of us. I realized that those balls of paper were in the box to replace some missing pieces, so we made do with some spare change I had in my pocket. (A penny makes for a great "brown circle".)

We didn't play long enough to develop fully intricate strategies, but enough to realize that the game is not easy, and amounts to being careful about setting up your opponent for an easy win. Perhaps the two player version is different/better/more strategically rich because, as it was, we could really only play with one future move in mind, and that was hard enough. Still, a fun game, and I'd recommend checking it out. So yeah, that was one check on my KH bucket list: play a board game. I'll likely do that again in the coming weeks. There were several other games I'd never played before, and Balderdash is a great multi-player game that I've played many times.

Later, I went upstairs to the bathroom and checked another one off my list.

Kiva Han Countdown: 28 days

You know what I should do more? Eat brunch. In general, yes absolutely more brunch all the time yes, but at Kiva Han, in particular, since there are only so many Sundays left where they'll be serving brunch. Three more Sundays, in fact, and then the 19th, their final day of business, is a Sunday, too. That leaves scant few opportunities to enjoy their brunch options and atmosphere.

I stopped in around 1:30 today, just before brunch ended at 2:00. I actually forgot it was Sunday brunch time, really. I just happened to be starving and needing to be on campus later in the afternoon, so I walked down to Craig St. and went inside and saw the orange menu on the counter and remembered, "Aha, brunch!" I had a hangover cure (of course) with some fruit and toast on the side, and a cappuccino, with thick and frothy steamed milk. It was delicious. The hangover cure also had seasoned tofu. The barista was apologetic that they were out of bacon, and I said that tofu is even better. It was quite busy there, even in the 45 minutes I was there as brunch was ending, and I overheard the manager saying a few times that they "got slammed" that day and were out of a few other things. No worries, man, glad to see lots of business. In other news, I even noticed a couple sitting outside on this unseasonably warm January day and thought about sitting outside myself but decided I didn't want to risk a car taking a right onto Forbes and cutting the corner too closely and hitting that giant puddle of melted snow that has gathered there too quickly and making a huge splash. Yeah, it was a huge puddle.

At one point, one of the cooks brought out three plates of food and called three girls' names fairly loudly. A few minutes later, he reemerged with another order and re-called their names even louder. This might have iterated one more time, I don't remember exactly, but by the end, he was shouting, "KELLY! JASMINE! VERONICA!" (I just made those names up, by the way.) As the girls giggled and walked over to get their food, someone said that they'd been sitting there awhile, and it almost sounded like they were upset about this. Maybe I just misheard the tone, but the girls apologized and walked away with their food. It got me thinking about how many times I've done something similar—didn't hear my name, didn't realize how long it had been, flat out forget about a food order, etc.—and how many times I've done the oppoiste—keep checking the counter eagerly, getting up from a table in the other room and hanging my head in shame and hunger while walking back plate-less.

You might have noticed that I didn't write anything yesterday. I already broke my promise and skipped a day. In my defense, it was cold and blustery and such out yesterday during the day, I had other shit to do, was feeling lazy, and ended up staying in all day until late in the evening. So yeah, I missed one day. That's the last one. Less than one month left!

Kiva Han Countdown: 30 days (yesterday's post)

I stopped by for breakfast yesterday (Friday) but never had time later on to write this post. (I went off to downtown for a Planned Parenthood rally, had a delicious veggie hot dog at Franktuary, hit the gym, and then went out for a friend's birthday all night.) That granola works (yogurt, fruit, granola) really hit the spot. I was in a bit of a rush so I didn't stay long, but was there long enough to enjoy my food, sip an uber hot americano and take the rest to go, and people-watch. It was relatively quiet for 11:00 on a Friday morning, and I could hear some employees laughing back in the kitchen. A few folks came in and out, including one older gentleman who I see there all the time. He joked with the cashier about Kiva Han opening a new location in Hawaii called "Huna Kahuna". Actually, that might have happened on Thursday, but I'm confusing it together because I'm writing this on Saturday. Oh well. It was funny. It was also really really really hot by the window. The sun was streaming in (as you can probably tell in the photo) and you could have melted cheese on the leather seat of my chair.

One thing I did realize while sitting there yesterday is that I have never been at Kiva Han around opening time. One or two times I have been at that corner very early in the morning to catch a 28X to the airport, but once it was before anything was open (like 4:30 am) and another time only the Starbucks was open (around 5:30) so I sucked it up and bought a coffee and bagel to make it through my travels. Other than that, I don't think I've been there before 10 am. (I've been there for closing time more often than I can count, though!) That's partly a consequence of my lifestyle (if I'm out and about that early, it's for class or something, and otherwise I'd rather just make coffee and food at home) but I also realized it should probably be something I experience. Then that got me thinking about other silly things I'll never be able to do there again. So here's a short list of things I've never done at Kiva Han that I'd like to hopefully accomplish in the next month:

• Show up at opening time
• Draw/write graffiti in the men's room. It's all over the place, why shouldn't I partake?
• Play one of the board games on their shelf. My friends and I are board game enthusiasts, so I'm surprised this has never happened. It should.
• Read one of the books on their shelf. Why the hell not?
• Take a nap on one of the comfy seats upstairs. I've hardly ever sat upstairs, let alone do this.

I'm sure I'll think of other things. And do them. Does anyone reading this have any ideas? Is anybody reading this?