Long Live The Neighbourhood Cafe

Until a few months ago, the US-Canadian international relations played out in the streets of my neighbourhood. At one corner of the intersection was JJ Beans, a no-frills Canadian coffee chain that does not change its menu all year. On the opposite side, a Starbuck’s. I usually went to the JJ Beans because I liked the view out of its corner seats. Two cafes across the street from one another in a small residential neighbourhood seemed … excessive. But both seemed to do good business. Then, just a few months ago, the Starbuck’s closed. It is now boarded up, and the JJ Beans sees more business than ever.

Of course, this does not literally reflect US and Canada. But late-stage capitalism is a funny beast. These decisions are just small numbers in one direction or the other for the executives making them. But they mean real lives, real jobs, real money, and real access to Pumpkin Spice Lattes, to many people. Because the machinations of industry are so abstracted from local conditions, who can say who deserved anything? At the ground level, people suffer for no good reason.

Anyway, I still enjoy drawing at the JJ Beans. For the first time, I tried it with the Pentel brush pen.