This Post Is Not Worth Reading

Winona, MN--I'm not sure how I manage to keep all these coffee shops associated with the correct city, but I do: if you held up pictures of all of them, I could tell you where they're located (I could even distinguish between the Caribou Coffee in Monticello and the Caribou Coffee in Elk River). Now, maybe you could say I have a prodigious memory. And you would not be far wrong. But the frequently transparent efforts of coffee shop managers to make their businesses distinctive are surprisingly effective regardless of how aware the viewer is of such efforts (the same can be said for a lot of modern advertising, actually--despite the fact that we're all aware of advertising's efforts, it still works, and often its own willingness to play on our assumptions and the way non-advertisers think advertising work is one of its most effective mechanisms), and so I have no trouble remembering that the coffee shop in Grand Rapids (“Brewed Awakenings”) had blackandwhite tile floors and lots of yellow elsewhere while the one in Hastings (“Second Street Coffee Shop”, and that's another interesting story out here; a town's First Street is the first street parallel to the river, and so on from there, except that because of the threat and history of flooding a lot of First Streets are basically empty or abandoned to the point where there frequently isn't a First Street at all, and Second Street is the one with shops and cafes) is the one with the slightly overbearing proprietor.

But enough of such banalities. There is important business to which to attend. Was it about kayaking? Where's my damn editor? (Ed.: it's Labor Day. Shut up so I can go back to sleep.) Ah. Well, in that case I suppose we all deserve a break.