Talking (Coffee) Shop
On change and being a regular at an old fave
Few things awaken my rule-following vigilante heart like someone asking me to watch their stuff at the coffee shop while they go to the restroom. Never has a laptop been so safe.
It happened the other day at Ugly Mugs, my favorite coffee shop in East Nashville, when a woman named Carrie asked me to watch her things. Who couldn’t help but oblige? It’s coffee shop code—people looking after each other and exercising some faith. Mostly, strangers asking other strangers to help them.
Sure enough, I don’t really know Carrie. I don’t know what type of work she does. I’ve never known her last name. But we’ve been on nodding terms at Ugly Mugs for about a decade. This is our sometimes “coffice” as my friend Caroline calls it.
People talk a lot about how much Nashville has changed. Astronomical rents or oversaturation driving out local restaurants. Gentrification uprooting longtime neighbors. A bonkers tourist district downtown. The expanding skyline. Intersections that suddenly feel unrecognizable with landscapes rearranged like LEGOs. It’s all true! But lately I’ve been thinking about Nashville and the idea of being a regular at a place through the lens of this coffee shop, a place where it feels like I’ve spent enough time to watch water shape a rock.
I started coming to Ugly Mugs just after it opened in 2008. In those days, it was a quieter place in a neighborhood that had a reputation for some crime. My friend Dave Coleman, a musician and producer, worked at Ugly Mugs back then and said he would open at 6 a.m. and sometimes not see a soul for a couple hours.
It also wasn’t especially cool back then. It didn’t have a hip vibe, aloof baristas and vinyl record players. It wasn’t a well-worn hippy-crunchy type of coffee house either. It didn’t really have a vibe at all except as a workhorse of a coffee shop with a neutral palette of grays in a big open room with a garage door window. Strong brew. Solid tables. Plentiful outlets. Pretty good wifi. And the peaceful white noise of baristas whirling and banging at the espresso machine.
I would eventually write the majority of two books there. I used go in early before work hours at my newsroom gig to get jacked up on caffeine and a head start on the day. I rarely if ever saw families, but I’d see working musicians who lived in the neighborhood, maybe taking advantage of lower rents like I was. I’d see Dave, of course, and people like Warren Pash who wrote “Private Eyes” for Hall & Oates and the guy who folks knew as playing trombone with Prince.
Meanwhile, I got to know the owners, a couple named Courtney and Jarod, and then as it happens in the best of neighborhoods, I realized the web of connections I had to these folks. I took Zumba classes at the Y from Courtney’s sister Alison, and Alison’s husband March, the landlord at Ugly Mugs, had a father named John Egerton, who became like a mentor to me. It made going there really feel like being part of a community.
These days, though, Ugly Mugs can feel like many places in Nashville—sorta different. Courtney and Jarod sold it a while back, and it's been renovated. A line snakes to the door often and it’s almost always busy…and loud. I’ve overhead musician-manager meetings and dudes bitching about jazz gigs. I’ve eavesdropped on first dates and groups of tourists talking about where to get hot chicken. And I watched two toddlers in a toy jeep take the hairpin turn of the wheelchair ramp on two wheels as their mom chased after them. With a popular donut shop next door now and a small grassy area, the families and tourists have most definitely found the place.
Under this change, though, I still find threads of connection and a place where I feel like I belong. While the city has been experiencing a wave of restaurant closures this week, it makes me think about how important and gratifying it can be to be a regular at a place. To have a spot where you can recognize folks and feel a part of a rhythm. To know that even noticing the change at a place—and to feel the impermanence of it all—is a gift in and of itself.
A few of the baristas occasionally ask what I’m working on, because even if they don’t know my name, they know why I peck away on my keyboard in the corner. I’m certainly no special case. They do this with other customers, and I love to hear it. “Lots of articles have been written at Ugly Mugs,” a barista named Josh explained to his newer co-worker one day as he handed me a specially selected mug with a wink:
The working musicians are still around too, though the names have changed. Earlier this year I watched Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show walk through the courtyard. A few minutes after he left, the guitar/banjo virtuoso Molly Tuttle appeared. Both had been nominated for Grammys at the awards a couple nights earlier. It gave me the feeling I think many of us from Nashville know. One minute you’re annoyed at getting your ears blown out by a guy with a guitar in the corner of a place you expected would be quiet and the next you’re realizing just how amazing it can be surrounded by so much creativity, talent, craft and expression.
I’m probably nostalgic about all this, because we recently sold our house in Nashville. For the first time in about 20 years, I don’t have a residence there. We plan on having a spot in town again someday. But in the meantime, I’ve been sorting through my feelings about the place—a place that will always be part of me for the way it helped shape me through people, work, lessons and a whole lot of fun. I’ve been thinking about how we tend to find what we’re looking for in a place. If I want to be annoyed about Nashville, I’ll find reasons to be. But if I want to see the best of it, I’ll easily find that too. Yeah, it’s changed, but so have I, thankfully.
I don’t mean to be too pollyanna about change. It pains me to see local restaurants closing where people have worked so hard to provide us with hospitality. I know those places will forever be a part of the tapestry that makes a place. Their departure, though, affirms the idea to be a regular. I need to find my regular spots where I live now in St. Pete and be sure to visit the old faves—and nod to Carrie—when I’m back in town. To be like my friends Cindy and Keith who’ve had a date every week at Margot Cafe for about 20 years. And to be grateful for places where we can look in on each other—and have the honor of looking after each other’s stuff.
One morning as I sat at an outdoor table at Ugly Mugs an older man I’d never seen before came up the steps to enter. From the opposite direction came Barista Josh. “Good morning,” Josh said, addressing both of us. “Here we are again. What a wonderful thing.”
Recipe: A sort of coffee cake from my book Nashville Eats.
Man, I love this so much, Jennifer.
These words were so true for me after we left Nashville. Thank you for putting into words, the thoughts I've often had about the "regulars" at The Good Cup. Also, I LOVE the Olive and Sinclair Cake and made it several times! Hope you're doing well and love your new life in St. Pete. miss ya!