On Thursday I had the day off and needed to take our car in to get some minor service work done. Around the corner from the mechanics we take the car to is a nice little coffee shop my wife and I go to quite regularly, even though we’ve joked about it being a massive hipster hang out. I had nothing pressing to do so I brought my laptop with me to catch up on some work while waiting for the car.

I could probably count the number of times I’ve sat down in a coffee shop for an extended period of time on one hand. Most of the time I grab a coffee and go. My usual haunt is a Starbucks close to my work simply because it’s close to my work and I can get back quickly. I like to listen to random conversations that occur there, and have even turned it into a regular feature on Facebook, as evident by this gem from a few months ago.

Since I spent the better part of 4 hours in a hipster coffee shop, and since there’s apparently a big sportsing event coming up this weekend, I wanted to do a play by play recap of the entire ordeal channeling my best Dick Stockton to help shed some light on this epic event unfolding right before our very eyes without even knowing about it.

8:30am I get there, see there’s a couple of seats open, and proceed to order a latte and a muffin. Now I got the muffin on a plate but that’s about as fancy as I get. I eat my muffins with my hands, like a god damn savage that I am. Our neanderthal ancestors didn’t eat their muffins with utensils and I’m not going to front like I’m any better than them, so as soon as that toasty pastry comes to my grip, I maw into it with ruthless abandon.

8:40am Completely involved in a muffin coma, I look around the place and take stock of the kind of people who have enough free time to hang out in a coffee shop at almost 9 o’clock on a Thursday. There’s an old guy working on a tablet with a stylus and rocking a scarf like n one’s business, 2 women in probably their mid forties who look like they only eat organic and do nude yoga classes with a wide array of patchouli scented body products, a guy reading a novel that looks like it could be a Danielle Steele book for all I know, and a guy-girl business meeting that looks way more awkward than a 9m guy-girl business meeting at a hipster coffee shop has any business being. I’m secretly hoping he tries to close more than just a business deal during this meeting and it winds up creating some awesome content. The good news is they’re talkative at a level above the music, which is good for everyone involved including me.

9:12am Nude yoga girl has purple dyed hair that looks like she did it herself a couple weeks ago. She’s talking about the differences between organic and non-organic foods and it’s taking all my self control to not run over there and Pud Med her to death, but I decide sitting at my laptop and observing is best. She seems like the kind of person who would obsessively limit the toxins in her body and then drop acid from a stranger at an EDM festival.

9:41am A guy with an obsessively thick beard and buzzed hair on the sides of his head sits at the table next to me and asks what the wifi password is. I don’t know as I’m using an open access service. Shortly after he sees a friend of his who just returned from South America and they sit down to chat. They’re shortly joined by a third member, and these three amigos make up what I like to call the Hipster Trifecta. You’ll find out why shortly.

9:50am Bearded one is talking about Toronto streets and how they use so much salt on the roads and sidewalks, and how he has this pair of $350 shoes that he can’t wear out unless he wants to shine them every day because otherwise the salt will ruin them. I feel bad for his plight. Every time I buy a pair of shoes for $350 it’s such a pain in the ass because no one else salts the roads to my requirements. His friend is agreeing with him, and then goes into a discussion on the sociopsychological aspects of common video games he’s recently enjoyed playing, while also saying he needs to take more time for himself away from his strenuous photography/barista jobs.

9:55am Third guy starts talking about being a director in a play and then talks about a friend of his studying at Julliard and a film school in London. Bearded Shoes asks how anyone can afford to go to school in London. My thoughts are if someone wasn’t looking at owning $350 shoes they may have money for tuition or rent, but that’s just me.

9:56am I sneak a short peek at these guys to see what they’re wearing. Bearded Shoes not only has a perfectly coiffed beard, but he’s rocking a completely weather inappropriate silk scarf and a t-shirt with some band I’ve never heard of before, and a pair of dark grey corduroys and what look like Red Wings. Fancy Barista has what appears to be a cardigan and moss green corduroys and what look like the kind of sneakers that aren’t meant to be worn to work out in. Director is wearing thick plastic glasses and something like a military flack jacket if it were made for a runway, reddish corduroys and some North Face shoes.

Then it dawns on me. They’re all wearing corduroy pants. Is this a thing? I quickly look around the room, and confirm that everyone in this place except for me and one of the guys behind the bar are wearing corduroy pants of various shades and colours. The music playing meant I didn’t hear them swish in but it’s an uncanny thing to see, so much corduroy in one place like this. I noticed my heart rate go up slightly and I got this feeling of mild anxiety like I had to get the hell out of there, but in the interest of science I decided to stick it out.

10:00am The Guy-Girl business couple look like they’re wrapping up what they were talking about. I don’t think he’s going to close either deal today, but it is possible they might have a follow up meeting at some point. He asks if she’s been up to anything interesting lately and she starts talking about Tracy Anderson workouts (!!!!) and how she just finished doing a cleanse that sounded completely unnecessarily complicated and painful. For the next month she’s going to try to double her vegetable intake, cut out alcohol and reduce dairy. All she needed to do was say she was going to start drinking kombucha and she would be a perfect fit for any Gwenneth Paltrow follower.

10:01am Oh my god Nude Yoga girl just started talking about kombucha!!

10:04am The Hipster Trifecta are talking about how the bearded one is currently working as an intern and not making any money. Apparently, this is the most broke he has ever been. The other two commiserate with him and say it’s tough out there, and that he should just move to Montreal and become a barista while working with a local theatre company out there. He seems to think this is a sound solution to his money troubles. He was also shopping for shoes when his friends came in, so I guess he can’t be too broke.

10:12am The girl opposite Nude Yoga girl is talking about posting something to Facebook and uses a novel hand gesture to indicate the act of posting something to Facebook. The best description I could give of what this gesture is is that it’s like the American sign language sign for rain and fellatio at the same time. Nude Yoga girl seems ambivalent and immediately cuts her off to tell a story of herself finding her centre in a yoga class. No mention of whether said class was nude or not, but it was implied.

10:21am The Director cues up a song on his iphone to let the Fancy Barista listen to, since it’s a new group he’s never heard of before. Fancy Barista listens for a few seconds, starts bobbing his head, and director gives his critical feedback in a single word:

“Right?”

This seems to please Fancy Barista and he eagerly agrees. This music is “Right.”

10:32am The Director tells a joke about his friend going to school at the London film school, which makes the other two lose their shit and laugh way too loud for a small space like this. The crazy thing is they all laugh in an identical manner to Seth Rogen. Seriously, all three of them had the same ‘heh heh heh heh heh’ manner of laughing, and it creeped me the hell out.

10:48am The Guy-Girl business meeting is no longer talking about business at all, so maybe this guy has a shot. He just said maybe she could show him some of those Tracy Anderson workouts so he could get into better shape. She giggled at this and said he should maybe try to lift some weights. I flex my left pec just once in agreement.

10:49am The guy asks if she’s ever done a Mud Run or Spartan Race, which seems like something that would be completely not up her alley at all. She says no, she’s not interested in that. Shocker. This guy’s clutching to straws now.

10:51am Nude Yoga girl talks about how parabens in a friends’ skin care cream gave her cervical cancer. The doctors say there’s a genetic link and she was susceptible, then picked it up from a sex partner, but she saw a documentary and thinks the doctor is hiding that information because he’s getting a payout under the table to keep it quiet.

10:52am A guy just ordered a muffin. Calling it now, he’s the kind of guy to eat his muffin with a knife and fork.

10:55am Nailed it. Muffin boy’s eating his muffin like he knows what he’s doing with it. There’s something unnerving about watching the use of utensils when there is no use for them. It’s like people who eat pizza with a knife and fork, cutting the pizza into small eatable sized chunks instead of picking that thick slab up with one or even better two hands and biting into the pointy end. It’s like someone using a fork to eat ice cream. YOU JUST DON’T DO THAT SHIT!!

10:58am Nude Yoga girl is now saying how you don’t need to shower any more than once a week. For someone who sounds so scared of toxins in skin care and eating organic she doesn’t seem too concerned with hygiene.

11:01am Bearded Shoes Rogen has to go soon, but not until after he tells his group about the Beamer he just leased. Man that’s an awesome car. Every one of his friends agrees and sound jealous. Wait, isn’t this the poorest you’ve ever been? Maybe he had to cut back on the number of beard maintenance products he uses to afford the combo of shoes and car on an interns salary. He says he can barely afford the car is is pretty sure they’re going to repossess it after about 6 months, then laughs about it.

11:02am Guy-Girl Meeting are getting up to leave now. They stopped talking about business over an hour ago and they wound up spending the rest of the time having her talk about stuff she likes and him trying to get involved with that stuff. She kept shutting it down with an admirable degree of expertise. Looks like both deals aren’t getting closed today after all.

11:15am The girl with the Nude Yoga girl is trying to think of something to get her boyfriend for Valentines Day. This doesn’t sit well with Nude Yoga girl because men are supposed to get women something on Valentines day, not the other way around. Also, it’s nothing more than a corporate culture holiday created by the Hallmark corporation to sell more crappy cards, didn’t you know.

11:23am The Director Rogen starts talking about this amazing life-changing discussion he had with a barista at a different coffee shop in the city that completely changed the way he looked at and did everything in his life. It boiled down to forming connections with people. Fancy Barista Rogen asks what the guys name was because maybe he’s met him before. Director Rogen never asked so he can’t recall. Great connection, dude.

11:37am My laptop battery is running low, so I’ll have to look at packing up and leaving soon. Guy-Girl business meeting left a little while ago and now there’s 2 20-something girls talking about stickers or MySpace or something like that, I can’t understand it. Bearded Shoes Intern has left to go presumably back to work, and his other two friends are talking about the Barista Rogen’s trip to South America and how amazing an experience it was and how connected to the earth he felt. Nude Yoga girl is continuing to tell her friend how superior her world views are to everyone else, Muffin Boy is still eating pieces of the muffin he ordered 40 god damn minutes ago. Seriously, just finish the damn thing. You don’t get bonus points for being the last at eating. I’m tempted to get another and just smash the thing while staring at him.

11:45am Some guy is talking on his phone, on speaker mode even, with who I presume is a graphic artist working on some kind of logo for him. He’s loud, swearing, and tearing this guy apart, all while making damn sure the entire place can hear it. Because when ever I’m in a public place where everyone could easily hear my discussions, I put that shit on speaker. It’s the sane thing to do, right?

11:47am Speaker Phone is still talking and my laptop battery meter just flashed to 2% battery life. It’s time to go. It’s been a slice, Hipster Coffee Shop, but I’ve had my fill of your discussions for a day. Thus concludes the Meatheads journey into a hipster coffee shop.