The Café Vanellas

1: on coffee shops

// Toriv

Café Vanellas sits in the middle of a bustling side street just off downtown Montréal. Normally I'd tell you exactly where -- we have to do all our own advertising, you know -- but right now my dad is worried just the simple fact of me writing this will attract the wrong kind of attention. Yes, I can see him worrying from here. So here I am, telling you about this café of ours while unhelpfully keeping the location somewhat secret, hoping that by the end of this I'll have intrigued you enough for you to put the effort into actually finding the place on your own.

In the spirit of thwarted but persistent advertising, here's an interesting factoid: café Vanellas is staffed entirely by elves. Now before you start crying about the evils of overbearing political correctness, I should tell you we don't consider ourselves particularly political. I mean I vote and everything, but that's really all I, personally, have to do with this great country's politics.

I don't mean to sound super sarcastic about it. Canada really isn't so bad, but I've lived here my entire life, so honestly what do I know. My parents have lived here all their lives too, though they didn't always live in the city. But that's not really important right now.

As I'm writing, I'm starting to realize that I don't really know what is important, really. To be honest, this whole Toriv-sitting-down-during-his-break-and-writing-about-his-life thing is still a new idea. A work-in-progress, if you will. In-progress enough that my old man over there (I can see him from here, he's looking at me out the corner of his eye in that way he has, like he suspects I'm doing something naughty) is still capable of being worried about it. But my dad's always been leery of new ideas. He's someone who likes to get all nice and comfy in a routine: work, wife, kid, friends. The occasional vacation in the country, when he and my mom get too sick of all the smog. Otherwise, routine, routine, routine. Sometimes I have no idea how we're related.

I've only written a few paragraphs and I've already said way too much about my father. Freud would have something to say about that, probably. Ah yes, he would say, stroking his chin and speaking in the kind of thick Austrian accent you only hear in movies, ze subject, he has daddy issues zat stem from childhood. Something something sexual repression something. I don't really read, so you'd probably know Freud better than me.

For your information, I have never had a single moment of sexual repression in my life, unless you count the one or two times I've had to escape through a window because someone's parents came home early. But I would argue that such occasions were technically brought on by the opposite of sexual repression. Therefore, ergo, etc, etc.

So what have I written about so far? The café, my dad, sex. Yeesh. What would Freud have to say about that, I wonder.

Since I'm sitting in the café right now, I guess I should talk about it some more. Technically, it's mine. I mean, it's ours: mine, my parents', my friends', because we all built it from the ground up together. But technically it is mine since it's in my name, and since it was my idea in the first place. You could say I have both physical and intellectual ownership over this place, which I think sounds pretty cool. Toriv Vanellas, owner and manager of café Vanellas, of a certain number on a certain street, Montréal, Quebec, Canada, North America, the World.

I named it café Vanellas because clan Vanellas is my family, and I want everyone who comes in here to feel like they're among family too. I mean the good kind of family, the kind that smiles when you walk in and actually wants to know how you are. The kind that'll fix you a hot drink (or a cold one in summer; we do those too, take note) just the way you like it and hand it off with another smile and a "see you later", like they can't wait to see you again. The kind of family I've always had, because I've been lucky.