Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Sapphisticated

On Saturday morning JC and I went to Milkd in North Perth. You may remember that I mentioned it in this entry, revelling in the most pretentious promotional blurb ever to be committed to paper.


A coffee, a window in time to call your own.

A memorable coffee describes itself beyond the cup in hand; rather, we measure a coffee by its experience, its ceremony, the delectable character of its ritual.

No other act can define the day so artfully, or draw it to an end in such casual repose.

Milkd believes in the consecration of the coffee ambience, and understands it takes more than the bean to set the scene.

A Milkd Barista upholds the spirit of this moment, priding in the articulation of your coffee, your service, the perfection of your moment in time – no matter how you take it.

Rediscover coffee culture, have coffee with Milkd.



After the build-up from the flyer, I was expecting a large, airy establishment with lots of wide, glossy surfaces, and so much swank that my commoner arse would be repelled from the furniture like magnetic levitation. I was expecting waiters who regard you with lofty, resigned ennui, as if you’re just another barrier between them and the Dandy Warhols clip they’re supposed to be in. I was expecting to see people sprawled out, reading Camus novels, talking quietly with attractive Significant Others, or just luxuriating in the perfection of their moment in time.


However what we got was a tiny shopfront barely wider than a hallway, and so cluttered with chairs, tables and customers that there wasn’t really much space for a person to read the newspaper or work on a laptop, let alone sit in casual repose and quietly enjoy the consecration of the coffee ambience.


We got some menus from the front counter, which featured a lot of double spaced, sans serif fonts and long, complicated descriptions of things which ordinary folk refer to as “jam on toast” or “eggs on toast”. We ordered our coffees (and some long-winded fruit bread) from what appeared to be the owner - a loud, aggressively informal woman wearing too much make-up - and eventually managed to get a table, by donning our pith helmets, hiring a native guide, and strenuously elbowing our way through throngs of lesbians, who for some reason seemed to be all over the place.


I’ve got to be honest – I don’t get along with most lesbians. I try to live and let live, but they just always seem to be angry with me, or at the very least miffed. Coming into their presence bearing a y chromosome is apparently like committing some sort of hate crime, the equivalent of going to a Bar Mitzvah wearing a swastika. And these ones were no exception. There were a couple of occasions in which they had to speak to me, to ask me to move my bag or if I was using an empty chair, and I could sense them gritting their teeth and fighting down their disdain as they did so. “Must… come… into… contact… with… male. Must… fight… anger… against… his… complicity… in… global… patriarchy. And… his… lack… of… oestrogen…”


And they were noisy, boisterous lesbians, who seemed to spend very little time wallowing in the delectable character of the coffee ritual and a lot of time shrieking like camped-up drag queens and kissing each other on the cheeks, when not ‘accidentally’ elbowing JC in the head. I suppose this is what one gets when visiting a café jammed between the gay ghettos of Leederville and Mt Lawley, but there were gay men there too, and they seemed to be able to keep their window in time to call one’s own to themselves. I say get your act together, girls, and fight the phallocentric orthodoxy with a bit of decorum!


As for the coffee, which, after all, was supposed to be the point, it was actually a little less robust than I usually like. But that probably just demonstrates my lack of refinement. I’ve been drinking incorrectly articulated coffee for so long, I don’t appreciate the proper stuff when I taste it.

8 Comments:

Blogger MC Etcher said...

Wow. One of your funniest posts yet - my favorite line is... oh never mind they're all great.

3:57 AM  
Blogger T said...

Ah, lesbians. Even the ones who start out liking men tend to end hating them. The coffee blurb reminds me of the Harbucks episode on South Park.

7:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

well.... one who doesn't understand the meeting of genres,( not to mention a homophobic, and possibly closet gay man himself) and the contempory style of living that such places like north perth aquire to become, firstly it is an espresso bar, not a restaurant. Obviously you are yet to educate yourself on the culture that is coffee, secondly a robusta bean is not whats on the menu, but instaed arabican, so your palatte was in the wrong place to begin with, thirdly the likes of you right wing, bush loving fare need to head back to the inner suburbs, along with your tired old money, where dome and sizler may very well suit your agenda.... our family has lived in north perth for over 20 years, and i say great to finally have a place to call our own... and i love ezzenza coffee... thank you milkd

7:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have had many experiences at Milkd and personally have not shared this gentleman's unfortunate experience. Infact I go to milkd everyday and yet again have never experienced anything like this. I love Milkd, the service is amazing, the coffee is amazing, the energy is amazing. I think Mr Blobber has some personal issues with his sexuality and obviously has no employment as he has time to write such incorrect guff which is totally incorrect.

8:12 PM  
Blogger Blandwagon said...

Hee hee hee. I think I have a new tagline for this blog...

Get On the Blandwagon!: incorrect guff which is totally incorrect.

11:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow - you've got some serious issues dude. Delighted you didn't like Milkd. Couldn't bear your grumpy homophobe ego messing up the place anymore than once. I like my straight men civilised.

12:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Milkd is a fantastic addition to North Perth. Homophobia is alive and has its own blog page. I hear Gloria Jeans does a great coffee perhaps you and your straightness could pay them a visit. I'm sure there is a Vanilla Slice with your name on it. Now disappear.

1:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fascinating!

It's moments like this that I wish I had a blogspot account so I could post under an actual identity, rather than just being listed as anonymous - but Blanders knows who I am...

Isn't it interesting that you receive four negative comments, all of which suggest that not liking Milkd, and not liking the particular crowd of people who were there when you visited, equals homophobia (or at least "some personal issues with his sexuality"?). And isn't it interesting that all of these responses contain notably creative spelling, grammer, and word choice (my favourite is "acquire to become". How very materialistic of you, sweetheart. A lesbian freudian slip? Now there's an amusing "meeting of genres").

It's probably a good thing you don't drink properly articulated coffee in a consecrated ambience, Blanders. Your spelling and grammer would go straight down the kahzi, and you'd start labelling everyone who disagreed with you a "homophobe".

And keep writing your blog - I read it every day, and I'm very disappointed when there isn't a new entry!

(A linguistic aside. The term "phobia" properly means an unreasonable or inappropriate fear. Think "arachnophobia" or "claustrophobia". I'm sure there are people who exhibit all the physiological symptoms of panic in the presence of a homosexual person, and these unfortunates could quite accurately be described as "homophobic". The more common use of the term, however, seems to be applied to people who are merely critical of a particular homosexual person, or group of people, or simply find them distasteful or offensive. Not a "phobia" at all. I find cockroaches distasteful and offensive - that doesn't mean that I have "roach-a-phobia"!

This shift in meaning represents a significant "hearts and minds" victory for homosexual and progressive politics. When you don't have any real impact on the world, these petty victories mean a lot...)

10:54 PM  

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