John presiding over his demesne

Last week, when I was writing my wineberry article, I mentioned Aroma Coffee Roast. In my first draft, I wrote something like this.

This morning I was sitting at Aroma Coffee Roast…

What? You don’t know Aroma? OK, stop reading this and go there right now. I’m serious. This column is about local color, and for that you can’t do better than Aroma. Think “Cheers” but with coffee instead of beer.

I deleted this long before the final draft because, even at its best, my writing is too self-indulgent with its cute little elliptical asides. Also, the statement was overdrawn. You don’t have to check out Aroma Coffee Roast. Aroma might not be your kind of place. But let me tell you why it’s my kind of place.

When I walked into Aroma for the first time I was only looking for information. My neighbor had asked me to start walking her rescue greyhound, so I wanted to know about any special needs the dog might have. I heard that the people at Aroma were dog lovers, and that I should talk to John about Diana, an Aroma regular with a rescue greyhound.

Well, I eventually met John, Diana and Dash the greyhound. But long before then, I was hooked on Aroma. One reason was the tea. Another was the internet connection, which is so fast that I can get a lot more web development work done there than at home. But if caffeine and Wi-Fi were my main priorities, I’d go across the street to Starbucks. Heck, at Starbucks I’d pay less for refills and I’d be able to plug in my computer. No. The draw of Aroma isn’t that easy to define.

To tell the story true, I have to take you back to the beginning of December, a few days after I’d started hanging out at Aroma. I was walking to the Larchmont Library, and I met a dog owner at the corner of Chatsworth Avenue and Boston Post Road. We got chatting about dogs and, since so many dog lovers frequent Aroma, I asked him if he went there. He said “No, I don’t go there. I think the owner is a body part.”

He didn’t actually say “body part”. He said the word for a particular body part. You can guess which one.

Now here’s the thing: I didn’t disagree with him. At the time, my impression of Dave was “Now there’s a guy who absolutely does not care what anyone thinks.” Calling Dave a body part might have been a bit harsh, but I could see it.

I don’t see it so well any more. Over the last few months, my perception of Dave has transformed. I could cite a lot of little things, but there’s a single story that tells it best.

One day in January I walked into Aroma with Livy, a lovely Shiba Inu I was dogsitting at the time. Having lived in Brooklyn, where I saw many people hang out in bars with their dogs, I didn’t realize it was against health codes to bring a dog in. Dave told me I couldn’t stay there with the dog, and he was very apologetic. This man, whom I’d labeled Least Likely To Care What Anyone Thinks, was apologizing to me for asking me not to put him at risk of a health code violation.

That’s Dave all over. At first glance you may see a guy who doesn’t care. But keep looking. Listen to him talk about his dogs and cats, and about his passion to stop cruelty to animals. As he yells about a mistake one of his young employees made, listen for the fatherly affection beneath the yelling. You may catch glimpses of a guy who, if anything, cares too much.

And now I need to take you from Dave the owner to John the manager. How the heck can I do that? I feel like I’m narrating a nature show and I have to cut straight from a honey badger to a koala bear. How can I build a coherent narrative segue from one animal to the other, let alone describe the unlikely harmoniousness of their relationship? I know! I’ll use a beer analogy!

Odds are, you’ve never had barleywine. It’s a style of beer not widely known, and I’ll tell you why: it’s an acquired taste. And I don’t mean an “Is it just me, or does that have a bit of an edge to it?” acquired taste. No, I’m talking about a “Why is the ceiling spinning and, come to think of it, why am I looking at the ceiling in the first place?” sort of acquired taste. It took me years of drinking successively more potent beers to acquire a love of barleywines, and even I wouldn’t want to drink a barleywine every night.

Dave is a barleywine.

Do you have a desert island drink? Maybe for you it’s a red that you love to drink with anything regardless of what the wine guides say, or an imperial stout that you love so much you’ll drink it in high summer. For me, it’s a Belgian saison, or farmhouse ale. Saison was my first beer love, and it’s still my desert island beer. I could drink saison any time, any place, from the top of an Adirondack mountain on a night when the temperature dips to -30° to the edge of a barbecue pit during a 110° heat wave. Saison goes with anything.

John is a saison.

Saying that John can talk to anyone would be like saying that Louis Armstrong had a pretty good ear for music; it criminally understates the scope and depth of the talent. I can talk to anyone; it’s a point of pride with me. But compared to John, I’m bush league. John doesn’t just remember everyone’s name. He remembers everything about them. And that’s just the start.

Unlike me, John can hold his own in the most intense sports conversation with Dave. But then he’ll shift like mercury back to an enthusiastic conversation he and I were having about bluegrass, hot dogs or beer. Then a mother will walk through the door with her three-year-old, and within moments John will captivate that child like the coolest uncle on the planet. John makes it look easy. John is a force of nature. I think John could own the world if he wanted to, but that would interfere with his concert going.

To convey what’s special about John as a manager, I need to step out of Aroma for a moment, and walk down the street to a restaurant. You know the type: the one with the manager who comes out, all smiles, acting as though he’s excited to see you. He seems to be genuinely concerned about every aspect of your life. Paradoxically, that makes him seem less genuine to me. He can’t care about your life, or my life, that much, because then he’d have to care about every customer’s life that much, and there’s no way he could afford that while doing the amount of work required to make a restaurant succeed. It makes the whole situation seem forced, and a little creepy.

Now, back to John, who has a business to run. He needs customers. And if I’m any judge of people, it ain’t the coffee that keeps ‘em coming back; it’s John. He’s a performer, and he knows it, and he lets you know it. The performance is just extravagant enough to make us feel like we’re all in on the joke.

So tomorrow morning, if I walk in the door to Aroma wearing a T-shirt from 1982, John will comment on it. Our conversation will progress organically to, say, “Anchorman”, a movie we both adore. At some point he might change the music playing on the stereo to the bluegrass I love so much. He’ll make me feel special. Then he’ll move on to the next person and make them feel special. And as he works his audience, his whole bearing carries not only a nod, but a wink. The respect implicit in that wink makes me believe John cares more about my life than does the restaurant manager.

But enough about Dave and John. Together they compose the heart and soul of Aroma, but they’re not the only attraction–not by a long shot. There’s a whole not-heavenly host of definitely-not-angels populating that narrow room, so put one foot in the door and you’ll meet the choir.

You’ll meet a snappy dresser with a resonant baritone voice who not only works on classic cars, but hires them out to movie sets. He’ll tell you all about friction coefficients of different brake systems, and about the personalities of different actors. He’s currently driving a car for the Coen brothers on the set of their latest movie.

You’ll meet a shaggy fellow who will ask you if you’d like to read his poetry. If you’re like me, you’ll say “Yes” just to be polite–at first. But sooner or later you’ll find yourself surprised that his words touched you.

You’ll meet a sweet, funny mother of three with tinkling laughter. She’s probably about half my weight, and if half of what she tells me about her martial arts training is true, she could kill me with one hand while making a strawberry daiquiri with the other.

You’ll meet a laconic young man who recently had his hit song played during the Superbowl, and has another hit song on the way. He comes in with his wife and their adorable toddler, who munches on bagels as he explores the adoring microcosm of that narrow room.

You’ll meet a carpenter who’s also a barleywine, an immaculately-dressed lawyer with an acerbic sense of humor, a friendly man with an impishness dancing behind his soft-spoken exterior, and a kind, helpful man of consistent cheer and endearing earnestness.

And you’ll meet a guy who may not even notice you when you first walk in the door, because he’ll have his head buried in his computer. If you call him “skinny” he’ll look around in confusion and then back at you with a “Who? Me??” look on his face. He’ll probably seem to you like an odd duck. That’ll be me.

I had to take you down that line of faces to convey what’s special about Aroma. It’s not just Dave, it’s not just John and it’s not just Dave and John. It’s not any one of those characters. It’s in the way they fit together into a unique organism, and the way that organism treats everyone it encounters with crotchety equanimity.

Aroma is more than just “Cheers but with coffee instead of beer”, and for a week I’ve been trying to figure out a way to convey the distinction. I think I’ve found it. Here it is.

If you go into Aroma, you won’t be treated like a king.

But neither would a king.