Fantasy I

I live in on of the most beautiful places in the United States. My city sits at the base of a small peninsula that juts out into a bay on lake Michigan. Look at the back of your left hand. Let your pinkie fall away from your ring finger just a bit... the pinkie is Leelanau County. The space where the thin skin between pinkie and ring finger is where my city lies. The space between fingers is Grand Traverse Bay. The little peninsula sticks out there. You have some problems we shouldn't talk about here if you have a corresponding growth on your own hand. [smile]

Most days the bay, here I refer to West because I've either been a city girl or a Westie for most of mt life, is some phenomenal shade of blue on most days. Downtown curls itself around the shore of West Bay. And for most of my life the streets have been green with a maple and oak canopy to hide the majority of the buildings. Most of Traverse City looks green or blue with a little white sand and some poofy clouds. But as most things do, that is changing. I am sitting in a coffee shop looking onto downtown from across the bay. I used to be able to just see the courthouse tower, Park Place Hotel and most of the dock at the Maritime Academy. But now I see Radio Centre, some high rise office buildings, a new mix-use building and a couple of things that I can't recognise without my glasses. It is still a pretty city scape from where I am sitting. And in my mind I can see how the character of our Downtown and Warehouse District hasn't lost much of its Old Time Charm. In fact, I just walked the length of Front Street, downtown's main thoroughfare, with a friend. The buildings have been updated with fresh paint, retro facades and in some cases just a good hard scrubbing (read power wash) with lots of trees to offer dappled shade. Most of the shops offer some kind of refreshment... fudge, coffee, chocolate, exotic snacks and entrees or wine/beer. There is almost no neon to be seen. A coffee shop on every corner and a bar in the middle seems to have been the business model. There is just one problem with Traverse City...

For all the coffee shops we have nothing is open for 24 hours.

And that is the fantasy. I wish that we had an economy that would support a 24/7 coffee shop. Fill the walls with local artwork and host gallery shows for un-juried artists... heaven. Mini weekend shows where the coffee flows like a wild white water river and the traffic barely ceases could justify being open during the slow parts of the week. I imagine a little booth in a quiet corner of this gem of a WiFi hot spot where I could write late into the night without ever having to worry about closing time. It would be nice if we could have a little nip of something in our coffee between 10pm and say midnight. I just don't think that the liqueur laws are written that way. But I write fiction best late at night when I've had the chance to banish the day's troubles and the characters have a chance to say something meaningful. I also imagine several fan groups getting together to watch fave TV shows together. Castle on Mondays, Merlin on Fridays and the gods willing someone will bring us Robin Hood... yeah that won't happen.

It would be so nice to have a geek bar in this town. We seem to have an indeterminate saturation point for sports bars in this town. Maybe the geek bar is the answer. But how many people are there like me that Traverse City could support a place like that? I don't know. So I think that this will stay in the realm of fantasy... my fantasy. What a pity. I can see this being a really good idea as the Film Festival gains a larger following each year that it operates. *sigh*

Well, I'll always have the fantasy.