I’m All Lost In, #109: The tea shop upstairs; implausible names; Sweetgreen.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessed with THIS week.

#109

I can’t officially put Katie Wilson on my list for a third week in a row. That’d be Aryna Sabalenka-Edith Wharton-record-setting-levels of obsession.

But she won Seattle’s mayor’s race. And the city is giddy. And I am giddy. And she has security detail accompanying her now to the bohemian Capitol Hill coffeeshop where she’s a regular. And I heard from a friend who was at an event for establishment types this week that these people looked miserable. Understandably. Wilson has a left wing origin story (founder of Transit Riders Union, advocate for higher corporate taxes to support affordable housing).

However, Wilson doesn’t fit the old-school, social justice stereotype personified by leftist avengers in Seattle and San Francisco where socialists and NIMBYs have long aligned in a reactionary, almost nativist left coalition. Wilson is too 21st century, more AOC than Bernie Bro, for such hokey self righteousness.

That’s not to say Wilson will go all in on YIMBY ideas like Funded Inclusionary Zoning (funded by tax breaks for developers) a policy I’ve editorialized for on PubliCola.) But she is pro-city. Pro-density. And pro-housing. And, yes, pro-housing affordability.

She’s a policy dork who will examine the numbers to ensure that housing gets built. So, even though I’m a one-issue voter—allow multi-family housing everywhere in the city (multi-use zoning too)—and even though mayor-elect Wilson isn’t as unconditionally pro-development as I am, I couldn’t be more excited about the advent of the Katie Wilson Liberal Activist Layer.

*Seattle Socialist Sawant feared Katie Wilson.*

Having an unconditional progressive in the mayor’s office is long overdue.

Speaking of my Edith Wharton obsession. This week’s Quote of the Week comes to us from Glimpses of the Moon, the 1922 Wharton novel I’m reading right now: “It was something, after all, to be with people who did not regard Venice simply as affording exceptional opportunities for bathing and adultery.”

On to this week’s list.

1) Open Form Tea Shop

The wifi password at Open Form, the new tea shop on Pike St., is beourguest (be our guest) which I misread as perhaps a sardonic portmanteau: bourgeois + guest. I thought some snarky shop owners might be poking fun at the softy clientele like me.

Turns out no. The New Age aesthetes behind this “intentional” space are in-earnest sophisticates.

Not that I’m not bourgeois. But I certainly don’t fit the customer profile at this shop. 99% of the patrons at Open Form are early 20-somethings or students. And notably for such an overwhelmingly white city, the majority of them are POC. The aesthetic is “Free Palestine.”

Not politically. Just fashionably.

Inspired by the traditional Persian tea ceremony, the mood at this (two-months old) cafe translates as yoga studio chic. For starters there are the blond wood floors, freshly painted industrial interiors, white brick walls, and lantern and cube-lamp mood lighting. Then there are the touches: potted dragon tree plants climbing to the ceiling; stone bowls set on the tables and shelves, and a marble-top bar that serves wine (I had a cup of orange) along with the tea. There’s also a decorative 1970s Audio-Technica turntable with its carpentry-work speakers displayed on the wooden shelf that runs along the back wall .

Unrelated to the ‘70s stereo: It’s glitchy FKA Twigs, Addison Rae, (I had to Shazam that one) and Beyoncé beats on the overhead sound system. Entire albums at a time.

The baristas lovingly deliver bowls of mixed nuts, slender glasses of cardamom or chamomile tea, and silver trays of macaroon cookies and dates to the young patrons busy at their laptops or chatting at the huge, stately dark wooden tables.

There’s some feel-free-to-lay-on-the-floor seating too with throw pillows set around the long, low table in the middle of the open 1500 square foot space beneath the tea shop’s centerpiece, a hanging paper lantern that’s draped in mesh.

I learned about this inviting hangout after XDX recommended we meet there last Saturday for tea.

The truly distinguishing footnote about this cafe: It’s located on the second floor. Vertical Tokyo-style urban-planning. There’s a K-Pop store downstairs at street level. One day this week, exuberant teenagers lined up there on the sidewalk below in view of Open Form’s floor-to-ceiling windows. (Tokyo Zakkyo doesn’t only mean stacked businesses it also means symbiotic businesses. There are business cards on a small candlelit table at the top of Open Form’s stairway entrance advertising a sustainable furniture company called Ecology and a flower design studio called Mundo.)

Was it my subconscious speaking when I left my jacket there on Thursday. And so had to return on Friday. I ended up working there yet again.

The fact that Open Form isn’t open seven days a week (it’s closed on Mondays and Tuesdays) coupled with the fact that I’ve spent four days there since last Saturday, should give you an idea why it tops this week’s list of preoccupations.

2) Source Material

This was going to be the quote of the week, but it turned out to be more than that.

"Along the way, he has passing encounters with an enormous series of characters with obviously implausible names…"

It’s a funny line from an academic essay by David Buckingham about one of my favorite novels, Colin MacInnes’ Absolute Beginners (1959).

Buckingham explains:

These include various representatives of … youth cultural ‘tribes’: Ed the Ted (a Teddy Boy), the Wizard (a baby-faced ‘proto-fascist’), the Misery Kid (a follower of trad jazz), Dean Swift (a sharp-suited hipster and heroin addict), Zesty-Boy Sift (a teen songwriter), the Fabulous Hoplite (a gay occasional rent boy) and Mr. Cool (a mixed-race dude). There are also several adult characters who serve similar functions, at least some of whom may be thinly-disguised versions of real people: they include Call-Me-Cobber (an Australian TV celebrity), Vendice Partners (an advertising executive), Mannie Katz (a Jewish poet), Big Jill (a lesbian ponce) and Ron Todd (a Marxist enthusiast for American blues).

Along with a real-life personage from another book, a 2023 memoir I recently read by a woman named Martha Hodes who was held hostage by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine during an epic 1970 airplane hijacking, these disparate threads are on this week’s list as pieces of a surprising (to me) writing project I’m suddenly working on. I’m not confident saying anything more, but my review of Hodes’ memoir is here (scroll way down).

I’m eating crow on this one. Along with delicious salads.

I scoffed at this chain salad spot when it slipped into my precious Drag a year ago. Peeking in at the sterile, ersatz space, I also predicted imminent failure.

I stayed away from Sweetgreen for a year. But after being surprised at how satisfied I felt after a last-minute dinner there a few weeks ago (and surprised at how tasty and how much spicy tofu they packed into the the compostable bowl) I’m now slipping in regularly, twice over the past week alone.

I’ve got it down to a science. Scroll down on the touch screen terminal to “Create your own.”

I go with: chopped romaine and baby spinach as my base; garlic bread crumbs, tomatoes, shredded cabbage, cucumbers, spicy broccoli (a must), pickled onions, and raw carrots as my toppings; the aforementioned roasted tofu and maybe garlic cauliflower as my premiums; and spicy cashew as my dressing.

It’s also open until 10 pm, which is more than I can say for the kitchens at too many other spots in my neighborhood.

I’m All Lost In, #109: The tea shop upstairs; implausible names; Sweetgreen.

I’m All Lost In, #108: Katie in Seattle; Saby in Riyadh; Vegan burrito on Olive Way.