Here's to You, Leonard Nimoy

So there’s this Starbucks I go to every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday (which are lotions shop days, LSDs from now on. Giggle.) My manager usually sends me scuttling into whatever inclement weather that happens to be puking itself over the city in order to pick up two big (venti? I’m not really down with the lingo yet, despite my Starbucks frequenting) “Awakes.” I have no idea what that means, but my manager downs them like you would not believe.

Anyway, this Starbucks looks like a basic Starbucks—you know, glass counter with eerily preserved cupcakes and scones, frazzled barristas shouting over the screeching steamer, etc., etc.—but a little smaller. Like all the seating areas are shrunk to a size befitting of America’s Favorite Family (side note: how could TLC just arbitrarily assign that title to such an undeserving family?), or at least the parents of America’s Favorite Family.



It wasn’t until a few weeks into my LSD routine that my friend broke the good news to me: there is Extra Seating Upstairs. And not just ANY extra seating—it’s plush, rich people’s library chairs complete with a Real* Wood Burnin’Fireplace extra seating. It’s basically revolutionized the way I spend my lunch hour.

The best way to get up to the extra seating is to go at 1 or 2 p.m. This is when it’s busy enough for the Starbucks people to be too preoccupied to notice that a certain kid has zoomed up the stairs without buying anything in order to take a nice, leisurely nap with her feet up at the fire’s hearth. I’ve been known to do this on more than several occasions, as have a few of my favorite street people. The guy who wears the hospital bracelet and neon-laced Reeboks is a particular gem, as is the bearded gentleman who always warmly refers to me as "My angel, so far from heaven."

But the point of this whole set up is this: I’ve got company. Sure, there’s the usual prep school kids gabbing on their cell phones and an occasional minor-celebrity sighting. But there’s also a dead-on Mr. Spock look alike who always sits in this one orange plush chair with his ear pods on, newspaper rustling, and glasses pushed halfway down his nose. He always chuckles to himself as though at any moment he could be beamed up to the Enterprise itself. We have yet to make eye contact but I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that one day Spock will put down his paper, pull out his ear buds and begin to bond with me using one of his (in?)famous mind melds.



And yes, I had to look that up on Wikipedia. Don’t be a hater just because I never, not even once, joined the Larr-bear in his Trekkie adventures.

*Might actually be holographic or granite wood with gas fire, giving off the illusion of rustic wood burning fire