Where Were You?
from Notes on Machines
In Charlottesville, where I posed as doctoral student for a couple years, one side of the University campus is flanked by a strip of small stores and restaurants: it's where you go to buy your parents a Wahoo-wa bumper sticker, or to get a one-eyed bacon cheeseburger to cancel out your hangover, or to get a late-afternoon hit of coffee, which--when I was there--you could buy from no fewer than 3 coffee shops.
In one of the prime storefronts along this strip, in a space that must cost as much per month in rent as any retail spot in the city, a bagel store has been taking shape. It's an outpost of Charlottesville's best bagel place: at Bodo's, you can get a respectable bagel for the change you have left from paying your library fine. It's good food for anyone, and great food for students, and students have looked forward to Bodo's opening by the University for a long time, hoping every day will be the day they cross the street and see that the 'coming soon' sign has been taken down and the doors opened.
But they've been waiting for 8 years. The 'coming soon' had long been a joke by the time I arrived, in 1997. There were occasional signs of progress--furniture installed, menuboards hung--but the restaurant never opened. When we went down for a weekend this past October, it still sat there: well-appointed, well-positioned, and--for all we could see--ready for business. And still coming soon.
By comparison....
March 16, 2003
elsewhere:
- Ftrain re-vamp
- Paul Ford's already inimitable site, Ftrain.com, is now even less imitable, sitekit notwithstanding. Graph Narratives? Web Pidgin? A site designed to work better in Mozilla and Safari than in IE? Dreamy and strange.