Monday, August 10, 2020 - On Coffee & Tea: O Cafe - 482 Sixth Avenue (West 12th Street).

The first coffee shop that I ever fell in love with stands at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 12th Street.

It’s named O Cafe, but I call it O Cafe My Cafe; in homage, slightly, to the Walt Whitman poem: O Captain my Captain!

Although O Cafe is the first coffee shop that ever held my heart, it took years (nearly a decade) before I realized that I was in love.

I must have first set foot in O Cafe (My Cafe) on some afternoon or early evening in late August of 2011. That summer, a few days before Hurricane Irene, I had moved to New York and was set to begin classes within the New School’s MFA program.

Distinctly I remember the many transportation mistakes that I made over those first few months in New York. Here’s one: When I was first living in New York I was living in Harlem with my uncle. On the evening of our orientation, which had been pushed back by a week because of Hurricane Irene, my uncle gave me clear and precise directions for how to get downtown from where he lived, 148th Street and Lennox: Take the 3 train.

This was easy enough. The last stop on the 3 was (and is) 148th Street, so even if I wanted to, I couldn’t make the mistake of heading uptown when I meant to head downtown –––– go south, check. I got that part right.

Here’s what I missed: over and over again I checked the address for the building within the New School’s campus where orientation would be held: 66 West 12th Street. Got it, check. 66 West 12th Street, roger. Sixty-six. West. Twelfth Street, copy.

Fifteen minutes later I found myself walking around Lincoln Center, and wondering why the New School’s campus wasn’t nearby. Here’s why: I was looking for 12 West 66th Street!

Maybe this was my first ride ever in a New York yellow-cab: I promptly raised my arm at one of those forever long blocks near Lincoln Center and hailed a cab. At some point I told the driver that I was looking for the New School, and that “it should be somewhere near here,” –––– “Not far from NYU,” I explained.

I can’t remember whether he told me to check the address again, or whether I checked the address again by my own volition; regardless, upon reflection, I knew that I was had, and I found out how.

I know that I didn’t visit O Cafe that night; I was rushed and hurrying into orientation, so I couldn’t have popped in for a tea. There was no time.

But maybe it was a week later; on a Tuesday or a Wednesday evening, sometime around seven in the evening, before an 8:00pm workshop with Elaine Equi or a seminar with Robert Polito. I must have walked in, and not known what to order. This was before I had been introduced to the espresso ––– cappuccinos and lattes were still foreign to me.

All I know for sure is that the first time that I stepped into O Cafe, I was twenty-four and wholly fresh-faced to New York, New York. Here was that city –––– live and up close; and there was my twenty-four-year-old-self –––– curious; excited, and not nearly as prepared as I thought I was for the journey that rested upon the horizon, of which I was just getting my first taste.

Nine years later I can feel and make sense of what happened; and can articulate why I fell in love.

O Cafe My Cafe became a home. I was living with my uncle for the entire first semester and missed having my own place. I didn’t know Harlem, or any other place in the city well, but the corner of West 12th Street and Sixth Avenue became a landing space, a point of stability and consistency.

I must have gone in before class once, and then made a point to go in, again and again, as those first days and weeks and months of my life in New York slipped by. Gradually, I must have grown accustom to ordering a hot tea and finding a place to sit within the cafe –––– which has expanded since 2011.

I must have fallen in love with sitting near the front of the place, by the giant windows, and watching the men and women ––– and on occasion, some of which were my fellow classmates (and professors) drift by as they’d walk north and south along Sixth Avenue.

I must have loved writing and reading poems for class there. I must have loved seeing the same baristas and ordering my go-to beverage, which had to have been a green tea, of a variety of which I simply cannot recall.