Tea, anyone?

It seems lately I spend most of my time bouncing from one coffee shop to the next. This is visit #3 this week, and it's only Wednesday. In my defense, though, they are generally different shops, different vibes, different motivations behind each visit. (Also in my defense, I've switched to hot tea today instead of my usual frothy mocha espresso something or other).

My Rue visit the other night (read: serious study time) proved a little more ironic than I had anticipated. To understand the New Orleans coffee shop mentality, you have to examine 1. a New Orleans mentality and then filter it through 2. a caffeinated outlook on life. This particular cafe attracts a fairly type-casted clientèle. It's not far from the University District, so most tables are crammed with law students, med students, lib art kids with messy hair and dirty chucks, and the like. As I was wrapping up some intense note-taking for an impending paper, I noticed a young police officer walk in. Now I do genuinely respect law-enforcement personnel, but there were a few things wrong with this picture. First, poor guy had the worst-fitting uniform ever! It looked a bit like this:Yeah...inverted pyramid. Highly unflattering. To make matters worse, though, he wore this bulldog-tough-guy expression the whole time he was standing at the counter...getting a lesson from the barista on how to choose a hot tea flavor. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Tough guy pyramid man was selecting a hot tea, and the barista was teaching him how to tie the string of the bag to the stirrer to let it steep.

Meanwhile, what was going on outside while I walked out to my car? A high-speed chase. No lie.

Oh, New Orleans.