Yesterday was President’s Day, and I had the day off. I don’t think I’ve ever had President’s Day off, not in my entire career. It was kind of nice.

I did the usual “it’s my day off so I should do these things” bullshit, like dishes and vacuuming and admonishing the dog for being so hairy (I feel like she has a gland somewhere that she can squeeze and her fuzz explodes from her body). Then I thought, hey. “I don’t have to lawyer today. I’ll go do some of my own work.”

Then I had to choose where to go. There’s no shortage of coffee shop type places in Philly, although there is a shortage of parking.

“But Beck,” you ask. “Why didn’t you just walk somewhere?”

Don’t judge me, I say to you. I’m getting over a cold that I’ve had for about 18 years. Plus, I live in Kensington, which so far doesn’t have any coffee places I’m crazy about except Rocket Cat – but I walked by the other day and noticed that the entire building had been demolished.

It was quite surprising. I stood and looked at the empty lot, and then over at the Nut Hut, and then back at the empty lot, and at my dog, who looked at a piece of poop.

Apparently it’s a temporary closure. It looked pretty permanent, what with no building and all, but I guess we’ll see.

I thought about going to Higher Grounds, which is a quiet, lovely little cafe in Northern Liberties and became one of my favorite places to work when I lived over there. However, Northern Liberties has become a blistering hellscape of new construction and basics wearing Lulu Lemon yoga pants and topknots. While that has little to do with Higher Grounds, the fact that NoLibs is so cosmo these days, OMG u guys, means that parking is abysmal. And you can only park for 2 hours. If you don’t move your car, PPA will find you, and they will kill you.

Fishtown is slowly on its way to becoming the same Lulu Lemon Hellscape, but you can park in most places as long as you want, and I figured there would be more spots on a late Monday morning. So I went to Front Street Cafe.

FSC is not charming and down-to-earth like Higher Grounds, and there are A LOT of yoga pants in there. But it’s a pretty nice space; lots of room, and it has a pretty dope upstairs area for sitting and working. They also serve alcohol, but that’s not the kind of day I was having. I only drink at 10am on odd-numbered days.

So I went. I drank an $8 smoothie made of unrefined things without gluten or GMOs or something. I had a bowl of mushroom soup, but I was cautioned that it might have gluten, GMOs, and chicken broth in it. GASP! I lived to tell the tale. I worked on a short story I wrote a while back on a lark and decided to submit it to DarkFuse, to which I subscribe. Great site – it’s like 4 bucks a month and you can read a whole bunch of short horror stories and longer serials and whatnot. I also read a lot of their authors, like Willie Meikle and Brian Hodge. Anyway. I’ll likely get rejected, but that’s what this year is about for me – submitting even if I’m going to get rejected. That’s the way it be.