Tag Archive: san diego

Bend in the river

Posted by Ankit On July 31st, 2013

I have finally made the move to my first proper job in what they say is the real world, joining the Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering department at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago as an Assistant Professor. The better part of last year was interesting, with a lot of words being entered in word documents and a lot of pdfs being created, with a lot of flying to places I had never been and meeting a lot of people whom I would perhaps not have met had it not being for the fact that they liked those pdfs which I had spent all that time creating. And upshot of it all, of all the flying and of all the meetings and of all the talks and seminars, of all those times which I spent in transit cities wondering if the inclement American winter weather would give me a break long enough for me to make my next flight, is that I have finally ended up in the quintessential American city of Chicago. It's only been a few days here but we all know how important first impressions area and mine have been really nice. But we have also been told not to judge a book by its covers so I will not. I will judge only when I have read her first few pages at least.

However, San Diego is a book which I have read from end to end, several times. I have spent the last eight years poring over its many ink blots and many purple passages. I have come to recognize the musty smell of its dusty Western hardbound and  its pages have turned dogeared between my fingers. I am intimately charmed by its yellowness and I remember its content from its page numbers. San Diego is a book that I can judge, perhaps not to the extent that some people can but more than a lot because of the time that I spent and the people that I came to know there. San Diego is a curious city. I honestly believe that if you live there, there can pretty much be no justification for being unhappy. It exists peacefully in that goldilocks zone of warm contentment which can provide you with surprisingly more than you expect from a city like it. Of course there are always bright young things who are mesmerized by the shiny facade of other places but I have come to take their hopes of happiness with a pinch of salt and a passing chuckle.  San Diego effortlessly provides diversity in demographics, eclecticism in arts, a vibrant outdoor culture, near-perfect weather, and the opportunity to lounge about on the beaches of the mighty Pacific every day. There are great things that one can do in places like New York or Chicago or San Francisco or Los Angeles, feeding off of the energy and creativity of the teeming milieu. One so inclined can probably write great novels and create great music at these places, inspired by their sharp edges. However, it probably is much easier to be happy in San Diego and that really is the argument to end all arguments.

In addition to landing in the perfect city for PhD I also had the great fortune of knowing some truly interesting and intelligent people there who have wittingly or unwittingly molded the rough draft of the personality that I began with in the US. Through my experience of knowing them I have come to appreciate a certain kind of person, one whose particulars cannot be stated but whose essence can be. They have substance to share and possess a certain depth of thought and view. They are about more than the next hot hangout or the next great financial investment. I have enjoyed the company of such people in San Diego and learned from them. So much so that I have no doubt that the years that I spent in San Diego have been the best years of my life, and the most formative ones. I look back at the company of those people with a genuine sense of gratitude, for having contributed to the exciting exchange which shapes personalities, to the invisible and complex hands of human interaction.

Elements of a good cafe

Posted by Ankit On October 21st, 2012

At this present moment I am sitting in a quaint little coffee shop called Grendel’s café at the intersection of NE 8th Ave. and East Burnside in Portland Oregon. The weather is brisk out with the sky gray and moist in patches but the Sun managing to shine through the patchwork, reflecting off of the black wet asphalt of the street ahead. It’s 9 in the morning and bleary eyed men with thick stubbles and grayblack hoodies walk through the pale yellow wooden door of this café to have their cup of the house blend or the French press. Portland seems to coffee shops everywhere. While walking through the streets for about a mile yesterday I counted at least 15. This speaks well of the city to me since one of the prime indicators of how interesting a region is is how seriously it takes its coffee shops. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if there exists a correlation between the intellectual output of a region and the existence of places where people from different walks of life can get together, relax over a cup of beverage, and talk about different things. Bars do not qualify because there is nothing relaxed about them and often they are too loud to have any conversations more interesting than the cringeworthy mating ritual. Despite what they are made out to be I feel that bars in the modern society are engines of isolation whereas places like coffee shops bring people together. Moreover, a communal place is very much defined by the kind of people who visit it and bars, by their very nature, attract a certain demographic which tends to be more shallow and superficial than interesting. It’s a generalization which probably fails every now and then but it’s definitely more true than it is false.

Good coffee shops, therefore, must attract the right sort of crowd as well. This means that it’s always hard to find good coffee shops in financial centers like downtowns. I apologize if I appear to mean that people working in such fields as finance and marketing are not interesting, but it’s the truth isn’t it? Posh looking coffee shops with sharp dark interiors and high glass windows looking on to 5th avenues and Broadways which charge 5 dollars for their cappuccinos to jetsetting managers in black suits and shiny leather shoes must not be worth any reasonable man’s time. Similarly a café trying too hard to be alternative and on the edge just ends up inviting the wrong kind of clientele - the kind which is always on the lookout for the new, the hip, and the happening. A good café is, therefore, almost always to be found in a semi-urban kind of setting where it can generate a consistent following among the locals. Most people who visit it see it as a part of their daily lives. They know the baristas by name and have consistent orders. Most don’t see it as just a place to get coffee but as a place to sit and perhaps read a book or have a little chat with people whom they have come to know there. A good café is an extension of home and work for many of its patrons and it achieves this by providing a warm and cozy environment, a safe temporary little haven from the rush and bustle of the world outside. The good-natured charm of a nice café is infectious and just like most simple things in life it is often a matter of the stars lining up right for it. What it is not exclusively about is the quality of its coffee. That is almost secondary to what goes into making a great café! So here are the ones that I like in San Diego (in no particular order):

Lazy Hummingbird in Ocean Beach, Pannikin in La Jolla, LeStats in Normal Heights and University Heights, Mystic Mocha, Art of Espresso in UCSD, Peet’s in La Jolla and Hillcrest, Bird Rock coffee roasters, and above all, the most awesome Bassam café near my place.

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