"There 's nothing I blithely tolerate more than businesses which occupy the bottom floor of some grim new apartment complex. The windows on the ground floor are always too tall and I 'm caught staring at my reflection more times than I care to count. And as much as the easy access to a Good or Service holds an appeal, there is an unbridled discomfort in being physically beneath four to seven people who are willing to pay three times your rent for something that 's an equivalent size to your apartment. I hope the CalTrain never lets them rest.Time disappears inside this store. No matter where or when I place my order, it 's always on the counter. I have ordered Brown Sugar Milk Tea from the 22 bus as it careens down the one block separating me and a bucket of tapioca pearls. Time to order 7-9 minutes. Yet there it is, nestled in its special and separate location on their counter, a foot away from the sign that delineates where orders placed on Uber Eats et al. will be.There is always someone beautiful and younger than me working there, usually huddled in conversation with someone else beautiful who also works there. As I walk in to pick up my order, which I 'm retrieving on the twelve minute break between discussing Audre Lorde 's Uses of the Erotic and a documentary following the last years of her life when she lived in Berlin, they stop their briefly gorgeous conversation to say Hi! Welcome in before immediately resuming. As I walk out the store, the flaccid paper wrapper of my straw failing to enter the overfull trashcan at the entrance exit of the store, they give another brief cheer goodbye. Thank you! I feel too embarrassed to go back and pick up my trash off the ground. I 'm usually greeted by some awful gust of wind down 16th street, destroying whatever poise my outfit might have had when I left the house. At least I have this perfectly chewable made to order sugar rush of delicate tea leaves, drenched in the beauty of all this bright new glass."
