Where: Vivace
1400 NW 23rd Ave
Highlights: Vintage Style Bathroom with large sink and mirror
Taoist Baristas
Problems: Smell of pee
Moldy/dirty floor
Years ago my friend Heidi and I went through our revolutionary stage. We were in the early college years and she'd just returned from 6 months in Israel where she'd fantasized about throwing herself in the way of bulldozers. Heidi only visited me sporadically in Portland but every time we'd go to Vivace, a coffee house we'd nicknamed "the communist cafe."
See, we'd developed this name one night wired on coffee, drawing politically offensive comics of terrorist bombings, the Beatles, and Che Guevara. We'd looked around at the painted red walls, contemplated taking a bath in the cafe's worn out bathtub, mused over the free pastries the workers gave away after a certain hour and decided that all these signs represented a distinct pinko mentality.
Then I moved to Africa. When I came back two years later the cafe had sold the second story- the red half of the building- to a nail studio. They'd painted the walls beige, not red, and no longer gave away anything for free but condiments and napkins. Heidi now called Vivace "the capitalist cafe."
There aren't many options in North West Portland for mellow, brightly lit cafes so we sucked up our passion for anti establishment and continued getting coffee at Vivace. Then two things happened. The first was the arrival of a new employee who always wore the same floral button down shirt, whose hair was the color of communism, and who gave us free cookies in the late hours of the night. The second was the presence of the French Moroccan girl who sat at my table to complain about Americans' obsession with wealth and appearances and to ask me repeatedly my nationality despite my continual assertion that I was born here, in America.
Last week I went to Vivaces. The French woman sat in a corner frantically painting on an enormous sheet of construction paper and the red haired employee wore a pair of pants with a picture of Pooh.
"I love Pooh," I told him.
"I have a present for you," he said.
As I waited for him to bring my present I complained to Heidi about the smell of the restroom. "It always smells like pee," I said. "I think it's their air freshener."
The good communist came to our table with a copy of "The Tao of Pooh."
"I know you'll like this," he said. His hand rested briefly on the table and I saw the word 'relax' tattooed on his wrist.
I flipped to the middle of the book, "When you discard arrogance, complexity, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the Uncarved Block: Life is Fun"
I thought of the bathroom's constant smell of ammonia, the mold and dust that collect in it's corners, the antique mirror, and the pretentious illusion of cleanliness. I decided to start a bathroom blog to inform others of the best places to go to find release and yearned for the upstairs bathroom of the communist cafe with it's bathtub and excess space.
I closed the book and returned with Heidi to her car where a fat man got up from the bench he'd been sleeping on to drop his pants and expose his private parts to the world.
I imagined a Taoist's reaction to this form of self expression and decided that Eyore frets and Piglet hesitates but, like Pooh, the man revealing himself to the world just is.
Score: The layout of this bathroom is elegant and tasteful but the small size makes it difficult to find a place to put your bag if you choose to take it with you. I'm not a big fan of unisex bathrooms as you run a greater risk of inadvertently sitting in a puddle of pee. The heavy smell of pee that always fills this bathroom makes it equally distasteful combined with the layers of mold and dust in the corners which suggest a lack of fastidiousness when cleaning.
Grade: C
