You spill my coffee beans. But you also give me a tasty beverage. Do I slap you or hug you? I'll get back to you with my decision. (courtesy of http://www.adamas.com)

I’m a creature of habit. My morning commute to my five-month freelance gig always included a stop for coffee. The project’s long hours made caffeine a necessity. Soon enough, the caffeine headaches made caffeine a necessity. My trip always led me past one of two decent coffee places, depending on the route. The fancy-sounding though utilitarian Pret A Manger – located between the R train and the office – was one. The tasty though overpriced City Bakery – located between the F and V train and the office – was the other. A Pret iced coffee cost me $2.49; a City Bakery iced coffee $3.00 or $3.75, depending on the size. Both were well within my budget while employed.

The freelance gig ended a week and a half ago. The smartphone I was helping to market successfully launched, and is available in a store near you, and 137 stores near me. I won’t say which smartphone it is, though here’s a hint: touching a certain spot with your bare hand won’t hang up your call, unless that spot is the disconnect button. If you need another hint, follow me around and listen. You may catch me inadvertently humming the intro music to one of the videos. It’s forever burned into my temporal lobe.

Another smartphone project may be in my near future. And smaller, unrelated projects are starting to roll in. The last few months of paychecks have bulked up my bank account. But the next few months of paychecks are uncertain. Being essentially unemployed, I’ve reverted to my super, extra frugal ways. No more weekend trips to the south of France . No more summer vacations in the Hamptons. No more chauffeured limousine double-parked out front and ready for my next cookie run. It’s back to life, back to reality.

My first order of business, as someone without a steady income or government handout, was to reexamine my extravagant spending. I brought in executives from PriceWaterhouseCoopers to review my books. They determined that I have no books. But were I to have books, they would be empty, because compared to their usual clients, I’m broke. But were I to have books and money to track in those books, they would contain no extravagant spending. Wifey verified, citing the closet full of toiletries, paper products and breakfast cereal purchased in bulk on sale. I’m one frugal bastard. A raging $3.00-a-day caffeine addiction accounts for most of my discretionary spending.

Cutting back on coffee purchases is every financial advice columnist’s go-to tip. Want to be rich… make your own coffee. Somewhere along the line a Starbucks barista screwed up a freelance writer’s grande double soy mocha-frappu-latte and the company has paid the price in print ever since. Though lazy and cliche, the point is still valid. My coffee purchases add up to $90.00 a month or $1080 a year or $108,000 a century. That’s a lot of money. If I saved for the next 100 years, I could buy a kitchen cabinet or, perhaps, a bathtub in Manhattan. Of course, by then I’d be too dead to enjoy it.

The savings could still come in handy in the shorter term. There was just one problem. I only knew how to make hot coffee. And hot coffee in the New York heat and humidity is about as unappealing as reading job boards. Whatever is a caffeine addict to do? My solution – made possible by a grant from my last full-time employer – was pretty damn ingenious. I would make my own iced coffee. And because I figured out how, you don’t have to. Everyone always says, “that Norm… he’s a giver.” They’re right.

The first step is to buy some decent coffee beans. Wifey (then girlfriendy) taught me once upon a time that coffee doesn’t have to taste like runny tar water. Up to that point in my life, I’d drank it only to stay awake for exams and term papers. Enjoyment never mattered. These days, I’m a bit of a coffee snob. It doesn’t have to be expensive; Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonalds both make a cheap yet respectable cup. It just has to taste like something I want to drink. I went with the NYC blend from Oren’s Daily Roast for $13.49 a pound. Sometimes saving money requires a small upfront investment.

The second step is to brew the coffee really strong. Pouring regular hot coffee over ice cubes doesn’t give you iced coffee. It gives you a watered-down, room-temperature brown liquid. And that’s only enjoyable for people who like hanging out in 12-step meetings and hospital waiting rooms. Most recipes call for two scoops of coffee grounds for every cup of water (hot coffee is generally a 1:1 ratio). That was a little too strong for my refined palate and sensitive constitution. Delicate flower that I am, I had to let the ice melt and water it down. Adding a little more water to the next pot did the trick. Iced coffee, I discovered, reaches perfection at 12 scoops of coffee grounds for every 7 cups of water.

The third step is to add sugar while the coffee is still hot. Sugar doesn’t dissolve in cold coffee; it ends up as a tasty sludge in the bottom of a cup. While a nice little dessert to your beverage, it doesn’t really sweeten it. Four spoonfuls for seven cups proved to to be the right level of sweetness. Wifey would argue that that’s four spoonfuls too many. She would be wrong. It’s the perfect amount to bring out the flavor of the coffee without overwhelming it.

The fourth step is to chill. I put the coffee pot in the fridge. Six hours later, the iced coffee is ready to drink. If nothing else, unemployment has made me good at waiting. Pour it over some ice cubes, add some milk and enjoy. Maybe click away from UselessJobSite.com or NotHiringInc.com for a few minutes. Coffee time should be me time.

One $13.49 bag of coffee beans has given me six days worth of iced coffee so far. And there’s probably another four days worth to go. That’s a savings of $16.51 per bag, or $49.53 per month… not too shabby. If my knowledge of first grade math still holds up, that’s almost $50. I could buy something with that kind of money, besides coffee. Maybe when I find a full-time job, I will.

I don't know which sport's fans they'll cater to. Maybe jai alai, or competitive cat herding?

The Great Recession is stopping me and millions of people from finding a job. We’ve all seen the unemployment numbers, and they aren’t good. But this doesn’t seem to be keeping entrepreneurial types from opening stores in Jackson Heights. Every time one closes – which seems to be often – another pops up within a couple months. New or soon-to-be new stores are everywhere. It just occurred to me, while munching on a foot-long BMT at Subway and staring out the window at the grandiosely named “La Casa Del Internet,” that opening my own store and putting myself in charge could be this blogger’s ticket out of unemployment. Everyone else around here is doing it. Why not me?

Wifey brings up the idea periodically, usually in a half-joking manner meant to downplay that she’s also half-serious. I only gave the idea much thought once, a few years ago, when I was gainfully employed but not terribly happy about it. At that time, Jackson Heights lacked a decent coffee shop or even a Starbucks. There were plenty of places to get good coffee; Colombian bakeries make a mean cup. But there was no place to meet friends, hang out, read a book, check email or get exiled from. The idea of opening a little cafe has a certain romantic quality. It also has a major downside, as I discovered in the Slate Magazine article entitled “Bitter Brew.” The author methodically tells his story of opening up a Manhattan cafe and how it destroyed his life. That was the end of that pipe dream and the last time I seriously considered opening a store.

Maybe dismissing the idea out of hand was a little rash. I’m a reasonably bright guy, sometimes. I have an MBA and some work experience. I’ve shopped in stores. And I like money. That practically makes me William H. Macy, Joe C. Penny or one of those other department store tycoon types. Besides, three of the more difficult questions – what to sell, where to sell it and what to name the store – have been essentially answered for me.

Jackson Heights only supports certain types of businesses – hair/eyebrow salons, sports bars/chicken restaurants, hoochie mama clothing stores and 99 cent emporiums. If I can incorporate some or all of these under one roof, I’ll be assured success. Gainful employment and early retirement… here I come. The rents on 37th Ave. – the nicer shopping street – are supposedly outrageous. People on the neighborhood message board openly speculate how stores with nary a customer continue to survive there year after year. I like having kneecaps, so I’ll keep my opinions to myself. High rents on 37th Ave. mean my store would have to be on Roosevelt Ave., under the subway tracks. Elevated trains rattling my fixtures every five minutes will just class up the shopping experience anyway. And that’s more money in my pocket. Given my products and location, the store name almost doesn’t matter. I just have to misspell on the sign, as per neighborhood custom.

There we have it… Norm’s Hair and Ibrow Salon Chickon Sport Bar 99 Cent Hoochie Mama Boutick Emporiam is born. I may need a double storefront to accomodate the sign; I’ll have to look into that. Everything will sell for 99 cents, or some multiple of that. Stay tuned to Jobless and Less for info on the grand opening. You won’t want to miss it.

Does this make anyone else think of McDonalds? (courtesy of www.highlands-ortho.com)

Looking for a job is sort of an all-or-nothing deal. Either you find one, or you don’t. I haven’t, for seven months. There’s some comfort to be had in knowing that the job market stinks. Companies continue to layoff employees, and those hiring receive millions of resumes, even for that freelance position scraping burnt gunk off of boiler room walls with a screwdriver. Knowing may be half the battle, but it doesn’t pay the bills. There’s also some satisfaction in getting the occasional callback or interview. Validation that I’m doing something right does give me the warm fuzzies. But it too doesn’t pay the bills.

Job boards are a giant waste of time (though I did find my last job through one). At best they give a decent sense of the current job market and skills needed for a particular type of job. At worst, they help companies gather our personal information and sell it off to marketers who then spam the crap out of us. And where would I be without those more-than-obvious, less-than-useful job search tip emails? Step #1… figure out the type of job you want; step #2… apply for those jobs. I only ever respond to listings for which I’m qualified. My resume is optimized for keywords that appear in these listings. My cover letter describes why I’m the ideal candidate for the job. In my oh so humble opinion, my inquiries kick some major ass. They’re practically lethal. If you come across one in a dark alley, keep your hands in plain sight and back away slowly. And call me as soon as you can, as we will have just discovered where they all go when I hit the send button.

Still I try and try and try, or at least I did. The countless hours slaving over my (and wifey’s) laptop have given me an on again/off again case of carpal tunnel syndrome, or as I call it, “Ouch, My F**king Hand, err, Syndrome” (OMFHeS). The pain is mostly along the back of my right hand and up into the knuckles. It also sneaks around the side beneath the pinkie and up along it on bad days. OMFHeS is brought on by repetitive motion – like scrolling with the mouse track pad through endless, useless job listings and clicking on possibly interesting listings that never turn out to be. Typing doesn’t help. Using a mouse is better, but my hand still aches. The pain disappears when I’m off the computer, but it’s never far from the surface.

A few months ago, I switched up my approach to the job search. Whereas I once devoted serious time to trolling the online listings, now I barely skim the automated searches that appear to my inbox. Sorry, CareerBuilder, none of those 17 Avon positions served up in my last email actually applied, but thanks anyway. My job search is all about networking lately. Starbucks’ second quarter numbers will probably show a spike; I’m keeping half of their NYC locations in business with my informational meetings. I have the third-degree burns on my tongue and the pictures taken of me from a neighboring Starbucks to prove it.

Lucky for me employed types are willing to chat these days. Maybe they want good job search karma, should they get bounced. Maybe they like free coffee, though many don’t even let me pay. Maybe they’re attracted to my winning resume and charming personality like metal to a magnet. Alright, so it’s probably the coffee and karma. But people have been really generous with their time. I’m getting way more informational meetings than I thought I would, and learning a ton of stuff. And I’m meeting many friendly and interesting individuals. Who knew it was just a matter of asking?

There’s one serious drawback. You guessed it… OMFHeS. Shaking hands is really painful, yet unavoidable when networking. It’s how one greets another when they meet. “Hello, my name is…” [shake, shake] “I’m a marketing professional with blah, blah, blah.” In a networking environment, refusing to shake someone’s hand is akin to kicking them in the shin and cursing their mother.  It’s just not the best way to start things off. Explaining that I have OMFHeS makes me look like a weirdo. And no one likes talking to a weirdo, except when drunk in Penn Station at 3:00 a.m., waiting for the train back to Long Island. They definitely don’t want to hire a weirdo and be forced to talk with them everyday, sober, for the foreseeable future.

OMFHeS is bearable in one-on-one meetings. There’s one handshake as a greeting and another as a farewell, with 30 minutes to an hour of interesting conversation in between. Networking events – already painful for other reasons – are the worst. The two requisite handshakes are only separated by a couple minutes of conversation. And everyone there is trying to seem strong and confident (read employable), so they squeeze and shake harder. It’s all about eye contact and a firm grip. After a little while, I have to consciously try not to grimace. As mentioned before, no one wants to work with a weirdo, or for that matter, a wuss.

I’m not a wuss. Let me repeat that, for anyone who nodded off around the 800-word mark and is rejoining us now. I’m not a wuss. These, of course, are the words uttered by someone who is a wuss when faced with their wussiness. But I’m not. I played tackle football. I’ve been beaned with an 80 mph fastball. I can do a lot of pushups and crunches. But OMFHeS really hurts sometimes. And it tends to zap my confidence at the moments I need it most – first impressions. Thanks for the additional obstacle in the job search, unemployment. Next time just send the polar bear, or maybe the black smoke, out of the jungle to get me.

Where to work if the thought of another day at the dining room table makes you suicidal.

I need a new place to go blog and be unemployed during the day with my computer… ok, with wifey’s computer. My requirements are simple. It has to be reasonably close to home, or at least in NYC. It has to be cheap (by which I mean free) and near food and a bathroom. It has to be quiet enough that music through my headphones will drown out any noise. And no one there can care how long I stay. Oh yeah, and it must have unicorns, and rainbows ending in pots of gold. Does anyone out there know of such a mythical place? I’m willing to give a little on the unicorns and rainbows. However, the pots of gold are mandatory, a deal breaker. No pots of gold… no Norm.

I’ve spent much of the last few months working at my dining room table. It’s one giant mess that wifey puts up with but probably secretly hates down to the very core of her existence. Let’s set the scene, shall we? The space where I work is closest to the kitchen facing the wall and a painting of kids on a carousel in France somewhere. I would sit opposite myself (and often do during out-of-body experiences) facing out into the apartment if squeezing into that space weren’t so difficult. My chair has no padding left, so I sit on an old pillow, prompting the occasional hemorrhoid reference from wifey. There’s a pile of printouts, business cards and computer wires pushed off to my left. The cats sit and drool on it whenever they decide to spend quality time with me. I often type with one hand and harass one of them with the other, because I’m ambidextrous like that. When they knock the pile to the floor, I put it back on the table, inevitably mixing it in with the assorted newspapers and magazines strewn about. The salt and pepper grinders stand tall – like beacons of domesticity in a job search wasteland – until I knock them over and scare the cats away.

My spot is nice and central, letting me be a part of wifey and the cats’ madcap escapades. It’s basically the center of my apartment, which is near the center of Jackson Heights, which is the geographical center of New York City. And everyone knows that New York is the center of the universe. So by extrapolation, my workspace is the center of the universe… which explains a lot. But spend enough time anywhere and you’ll tire of it. There has to be another spot.

My desk, where one would think I’d work, is piled high with papers and books and all the other things I’ve been meaning to go through and haven’t. It’s a disaster area, which the city keeps threatening to condemn, and removed from the rest of the apartment besides. I experimented with the couch as a daytime work spot. The TV remains off, because it really wouldn’t be work otherwise. But my urge to watch remains a distraction. So too does the amazingly hot battery in wifey’s computer. An hour of work leaves giant sweat marks on my pants, which would likely raise questions should she come home midday. The UPS guy gives me odd looks too.

My local options are limited… Espresso 77, the bench in front of Espresso 77 and the curb in front of the bench in front of Espresso 77. Starbucks would give me wireless access too if I had AT&T, but I don’t. The good news on that is I actually receive phone calls. Espresso 77 has a strict policy for laptop use. The first hour is free with a purchase on weekdays, and each hour after that costs $5. I’ve never seen it enforced. They did remind me about the policy during my last visit. I was the only one there. And you may remember the outlet-locking episode. I love their coffee, particularly the New Orleans ice coffee, which is some crazy double-brewed concoction with extra milk… sooooooo good. But I don’t feel terribly welcome when I bust out the laptop. The bench out front might work it ever stopped raining and wifey’s laptop weren’t trying to accelerate global warming. As for the curb, I’m not that desperate yet.

Communitea in Long Island City – a short subway ride away and convenient to Manhattan – is another workspace option. The coffee is solid, except for my last cup which tasted like sweetened, milky arsenic. The baked goods are scrumpdilicious. And the place is big enough that no one cares when I hang out awhile; I always make a point to spend more taxpayer money. The other customers are quiet and respectful, except for the smelly hippie guy who taps his ring to the tasteful alt-rock and talks on his cell phone. He’s just asking for a Hong Kong Phooey to the jaw. And maybe a little Captain Caveman action for good measure. I’ll do it, one of these days, so help me. Just keep not showering and sitting next to me. Bad things will happen; I’ve watched too many cartoons and endured too much unemployment.

The Brooklyn Creative League invited me to a blogging event to hype their new workspace for freelancers and small businesses. So I dragged my ass out to Brooklyn yesterday on the subway in a monsoon in search of a change of scenery. This is how desperate I’ve become. The New York subway system floods in a light drizzle, so you can only imagine what it was like in a steady rain. Water poured through the cement ceilings of the station multiple stories below ground. I felt like I was entering an underground torture chamber from a Mel Gibson buddy movie, and some wild-eyed fu manchu guy was going to string me up and shock me with a car battery. Gary Busey didn’t show himself, but I kind of suspect he was there. Why didn’t I just take the ark?

Brooklyn is the blogging capital of the world. It has more bloggers per square inch or per capita or per something than anywhere else. Understandable, since Brooklyn also has more subsidized, tech-savvy white people who are filled with angst, blessed with free time and convinced that everyone cares about their “struggle” than anywhere else on the planet. Maybe that’s just Williamsburg. This temporary relocation actually represented a powerful convergence of centers; the center of the world and the center of the blogosphere were one. Did you feel the great suck pulling you in? Not the pull from Yankee Stadium, the other one, from Brooklyn.

If I were a freelancer or a small business with any sort of steady income and I lived closer, I’d join the Brooklyn Creative League. The space – a decked-out floor of a warehouse with exposed brick walls, shiny wood floors, an open layout, various office necessities and a friendly, accomodating owner – is stellar. And the rates are quite reasonable. Alas, I do not have the wherewithal. But I did take the opportunity to look out a different window down on a different block (Carroll St. and Whitewell Pl.). From my perch, I observed an empty lot with an overflowing dumpster, an elementary school and the back of the Kentile Floors sign that greets F train riders emerging from the tunnel at Carroll St. It was actually fairly scenic in an album liner note photo kind of way. I got a lot done, then trekked back across the city to Queens. It’s back to working at home.

Norm - 1, Cookie - 0

Jackson Heights is known for great food, and much of it inexpensive. Four of New York Magazine’s top five food carts set up near my apartment. Some of the city’s best Thai food is within walking distance. And Pio Pio, what the food Gods envisioned when they made chicken edible, is also just a jaunt away. But the baked goods around here are terrible. A decent cookie, until recently, was more scarce than a seat on the 7 train at rush hour, during the US Open, a Mets home stand, periodic track maintenance and a sick passenger delay.

I moved to Jackson Heights in 2004, chasing dreams of ever-rising apartment values in New York’s housing hinterlands. That I’d planted my stake in a cookie wasteland didn’t even occur to me. One evening, giving in to my ever-present cookie craving, I set out after the chocolate chip variety. The neighborhood is teeming with Colombian bakeries; my search would no doubt be short and, ahem, sweet. It ended over an hour later in a local bodega with a prepackaged cookie. Ten bakeries, within a five-block radius, and not a single chocolate chip cookie.

What I did find, over and over, was the same damn stale, crumbly cookie that every grocery store in every city sells in prepackaged form. Most of the bakeries didn’t have space to actually bake anything. They were bakeries in name only. What a scam! What a cruel trick! I broke down outside the bodega, sobbing on my knees on a busy street corner, rain falling as the camera looked down from above. Where was I? What had I done? “Nooooooooooooooooo!”

I set out again a few nights later for a place I thought I maybe saw something almost passable. Thar be cookies in them thar hills. The semi-sweet biscuit-type impostor (sprinkles… you don’t fool me) satisfied my craving, sort of. I checked back regularly after that, peaking through the glass door and into the display case as I walked by. Sometimes they had the cookie impostor, sometimes they didn’t. If they did, I’d get one with a cup of coffee. Colombian bakeries around here generally know coffee. I’d sit at the counter munching and slurping and reading flyers in Spanish for nightclubs and cell phones not requiring social security numbers. I don’t know Spanish. The cookie impostor became good enough after a few visits, though it sometimes tasted slightly of pepper. Who knows what was going on there? For wont of a better option, I returned time and again, year after year. This was my sad existence.

I took 8 pictures, and every one has that damn homeless guy in it.

One evening last Fall my wife and I were suppressing the vague guilty feeling brought on by yet another delicious and woefully under-priced meal out. We strolled down 82nd Street past the movie theater and 47 nail and eyebrow places toward home. I stopped short on the sidewalk. My wife turned a few steps later to see me staring into the adjacent store, a thin line of drool hanging from the corner of my mouth. I slowly raised my arm and pointed. Behind the glass doors, shiny silver trim and oppressive neon was a huge display case filled with actual baked goods. It seemed to go on forever.

I only sampled one cookie from Tulcingo that night—a thick, chewy sugar cookie with a cherry-flavored center. Any more might have short-circuited my brain beyond repair. We returned a week or so later for a sampling of baked goods to serve at a small election-night gathering. A glorious night got that much better.

The cookie place has since become an almost daily stop in my travels through unemployment. My energy starts to fade along about 3:00 every afternoon. That means it’s snack time. I put on a pot of coffee or lately visit the local Dunkin’ Donuts for an ice beverage large enough to bathe in. Then it’s on to Tulcingo. I generally gravitate toward the same cookie I got that first time. But options abound—jelly-filled sandwich cookies, sugar cookies with pineapple-flavored centers, half-chocolate cookies, half-strawberry cookies. Being indecisive (and a glutton), I sometimes plop two on my round, tin serving tray and walk them up to the counter. The cashiers recognize me—the cookie-loving gringo.

Last week Tulcingo took their game to a whole new level. They came correct. They got straight-up gangsta in the 718 Jackson Hizz-eights. Word… and s**t. Since I’m out of Hip-Hop lingo, we’ll just leave it there. You get the point. Their latest baking innovation is a cookie split into four sections—chocolate, strawberry, lemon and sugar—with a jelly center. My head almost exploded upon first sight. It was phat and fly (if gravity allows that). Any chance of me going back to those stale pepper cookie impostors went right out the window with my first bite. Unemployment, or at least my mid-day break, just got a little better. And maybe one day soon I’ll be packing them for lunch at my new job.

Please help me buy more cookies…

Can't work here either, as much as I'd like to. Maybe I could smuggle coffee into the library.

Jackson Heights is gentrifying, at least it was until the economy got all spooked and pulled the covers over its head. As part of the minority here, my wife and I have limited places to hang out. The varied ethnic restaurants are great, but don’t lend themselves to leisurely meals. The bars don’t cater to straight, English speakers. The bakeries, many of which have excellent coffee and scrumptious South American baked goods, are bright, loud and uncomfortable. And no place has wireless internet and electrical outlets for customer use. The lack of money thing is a tad problematic too.

A couple years ago, a cafe called Espresso 77 opened up just off the main drag, likely replacing one of the neighborhood’s 14,326 hair, nail and eyebrow salons. The place only has five or six tables. But they serve great coffee and invite people to stay with a light atmosphere and amenities like newspapers, magazines and, you guessed it, wireless and outlets. The cafe has become part of the community, offering story time for kids, bringing in musicians and staging exhibits from local artists. Starbucks – the neighborhood’s first – moved in a couple months later and a couple blocks away. But Espresso 77 has stood its own, cultivating a loyal customer base with a quality product.

Maybe once a week I pack up my laptop and notepad and head down there. The change of scenery helps to break up unemployment’s monotony and endless repetition. I’m still looking for a job (and distractions from looking for a job) while listening to music on headphones, but I’m doing it in a public place with people around. It’s social interaction through osmosis, and makes me feel like slightly less of a loser. Espresso 77 is pretty quiet in the middle of the afternoon – a couple people working and a couple more sitting around. I can nurse a strong cup of coffee, nibble a couple of chocolate chip cookies (by which I mean inhale like Cookie Monster on a bender) and do some work. After a few hours, I head off to the grocery store to pick up dinner stuff and then home.

This past Friday I took my show on the road, as it were. But waiting for me at my home office away from home office was quite a shock – little plastic covers on the electrical outlets, secured with little padlocks. The cafe was unemployed Norm-proofed, and I was devastated. They might just as well have kicked me in the crotch and pushed my hunched-over body into traffic.

Blocking off outlets creates a sort of time limit that isn’t that limiting, except for me. My four-year-old computer with its four-year-old battery lasts about 45 seconds if fully charged. I worked that day for less than the length of an album, and then left. My battery was dead. And my afternoons at the local coffee shop were over.

My guess is that people were abusing the cafe’s generosity and starting to cost them money. The plastic covers force out these computer users (once their batteries run out), without making staff act as bouncers. They save electricity and open up tables for more valuable customers – people who spend more money and leave more quickly. There’s a difference between use and abuse. And abuse hurts business. I get it. Customers who come in intending to sit down for lunch may end up leaving with a snack (or nothing) upon seeing no empty tables. Customers who walk by and think to stop in may not. Both may just go to Starbucks next time, where they’ll more likely get a seat.

The funny thing is I used to be one of the abusers, sipping a two-dollar cup of coffee in a to-go cup for hours until it was cold. My attitude was, “screw you, business owner, I’m following the rules you set up.” But I realized early on in my current stint of unemployment that this was not the spirit of the arrangement. I started spending more money during my visits and giving up my table when the place filled up.

Thinking about the matter later only depressed me more. Little plastic outlet covers had eliminated one of the few places I go regularly. A new computer or a new battery would solve the problem if I had the money. But I don’t. Now I have to ride the subway to go to a cafe with my computer, and that adds four dollars to the price of coffee and baked goods. Just how small and ridiculous has unemployment made my world that I even care about little plastic things and four dollars?

Go see Clint kick ass, just not on a weekday afternoon

[Beck song plays in cafe, barely audible over instrumental headphone music]

[Pots rattle in kitchen]

[Chatter of customer placing an order]

One of the luxuries of unemployment is my schedule. I can basically do whatever I want whenever I want. So if I’m not feeling the gym in the morning – when the aerobics classes blare Latin House and people who shouldn’t be wearing tights bend over a lot – I go in the afternoon. Or I tell myself that my arms feel a little sore and skip it altogether. Then I get to work, but not before a quick flex and preen in the full-length mirror. (Yes, those guns are real, but don’t be scared.)

[Man at next table taps incessantly]

[Norm sighs audibly]

My wife, to her credit, keeps urging me to do something fun. Feeling like I’d made some strides these last couple of weeks, I finally gave in. In almost three months of unemployment, this would be my first real, honest-to-God slacking. I went to a 2:00 showing of Gran Torino (no fluff in my slacking, just morals, heavy themes and death). And it felt weird, like I was doing something wrong, like I should be doing something more important (sending out resume number 18,437, for example).

[Faint keyboard clicking heard between headphone songs]

[Nondescript singer-songwriter whines over an acoustic guitar]

[Man at next table taps to beat]

There’s something uniquely depressing about a movie theater on a weekday afternoon. All these movies playing, but nobody watching. The few people who did show up, seemed to come more out of boredom than interest. The lady in line before me was looking for a movie with subtitles, any movie; she didn’t care what she saw.

[Man at next table takes cell phone call; loud prattle ensues]

Gran Torino played in one of the big auditoriums with stadium seating. I arrived during previews and – wouldn’t you know it – got a seat halfway up the aisle and dead center. The whole row was mine until that same old lady and her adult son sat down. An audience of seven total, and everyone besides the mother and son came alone. Sure, empty theaters are more comfortable, but audience vibe is important to the movie-going experience. And the only vibe there was loneliness.

[Man at next table continues loud cell phone conversation while smelling really bad]

The other downside of weekday matinees is subtitles. I can hear perfectly fine, but I found myself reading the dialogue and descriptions of various sounds. This is not a knock on the movie; it was actually quite moving and thought-provoking. My eyes were just drawn to the words because they were there. While Clint Eastwood was being a badass, I was reading about Clint Eastwood being a badass. Some of the effect was lost.

[Bathroom door squeaks as it opens and shuts]

[Toilet flushes in background]

[Volume of man's cellphone conversation gets louder as he returns]

Gran Torino is definitely worth seeing, even if you’re lukewarm on Clint Eastwood. The man knows how to direct a movie, and act in one for that matter. And with one of the Oscar movies under my belt, I can fantasize about all the post-award water cooler conversations I’ll miss. The other movies will have to wait for a weekend when my wife and I are both free, or video. But the next time I feel the urge to slack, I’ll try a different activity. There’s a bar around the corner frequented by grizzled drinkers twice my age. A liquor-fueled afternoon in their company could be just the kind of break to lift my spirits.

[Sound of scuffle]

[Sound of man's cellphone smashing against wall]

[Patrons cheer]

I was in the city today to see if the Apple Store people could tell me what’s wrong with my computer. (Turns out, nothing. It’s my network, yippee!). On the way back I stopped in at one of my favorite cafes – Communitea in Long Island City – to do a little work.

You can only spend so much time in your apartment combing through endless job listings without going a little crazy. Not that job boards aren’t supremely interesting but, well, they’re not. I’d rather memorize the side of a cereal box (mmm, 25% riboflavin). Some days it’s best to avoid the Netflix discs, the PS3 and all the other distractions at home. And some days it’s just nice to have a change of scenery.

All the tables at Communitea were full, which I’ve never seen before. It wasn’t even lunch time really. Everyone seemed to be settled in and working. Could it be like Mondays at the gym – full because people slacked off over the weekend? I carried on back to my neighborhood to try a new place.

My neighborhood (Jackson Heights) is paused in the early stages of gentrification. One of the first new arrivals was Espresso 77 about a year ago. It’s a great coffee shop, with stellar coffee and a cool vibe. And it seems to be holding its own against the Starbucks that opened a couple months later and a couple blocks away. The place isn’t much bigger than my living room, so I never bothered to bring my computer and avail myself of the wi-fi. I’d feel guilty preventing other paying customers from sitting down. As the signs say, I’d be kicked out after a half hour anyway.

But the place turned out to be slow during the day. People came in and worked on their computers or read the paper. One crazy-looking guy with blonde highlights had a video conference. The place was never full – my gauge for when to give up the table – and the people working were chill. I camped out for a few hours, nursed a cup of coffee so strong my head is still buzzing and got stuff done. Obviously I’d never do this on a Sunday morning. But random weekday afternoons seem to be fair game.

Let’s go ahead and add it to the list of work spots with free wi-fi (or ethernet jacks) that aren’t my apartment…

New York Public Library (Social Sciences branch on Fifth Ave.)
Communitea
Bryant Park (if it’s temperate and you have a full battery)
Queens Library (81st St. branch, but only in a pinch)
Espresso 77