More on places to write...

The Verb cafe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn was one. It personified the purest form of coffee house. Hardwood floors, dark, with dark little cubby holes and booths, a hand-written menu, gourmet triple-decker PBJ's on black bread, ridiculously nuclear punk metal thrash playing, a bulliten board covered floor to ceiling in papers and eleventy-billion staples, eight wifi nodes popping up on your laptop, dogs on leashes, chicks in their sundresses, smoking, shitty old bikes, bums, $8,000 Mac laptops, and the ubiquitous smell of two or three superb coffees in the air. I was there for five weeks, but never talked to anyone. I think I remember conversations, but they were only ones I imagined while I was there, or overheard, and projected myself into their shoes. New York is hard on you if you go there alone. Seattle's better, and I think better things are coming from Seattle than from Brooklyn. If you go downtown to that swilly Pike market, where the moj-merchant fish tossers sell their over-priced salmon, if you go way in the back where lay people aren't supposed to go, you'll find a tiny old chowder bar called Ivar's. Take the red, duct-taped booth on the wall, the only one with the funny crank out window, and crank it out. You'll have good chowder, decent free wifi, and an amazingly secret panoramic view of Puget Sound.