Lonely Seagull Classics: Considerations

The Lonely Seagull is a physical thing and needs to be touched to fully appreciate it. Just reading the words does not do it full justice. There is art and the cover feels like sand. The internets do not allow for this type of interface, but it can approximate it*. So, in that spirit, what follows is the first in a series of excerpts from the the first physical issue of the magazine. Except, this particular piece, a Consideration, was not actually included, so it has an added element of care and specialness: think of it as a deleted scene. One that you'd actually watch.

*Not really, though.

The guy at Mudraker’s
By Benjamin Adorno

The guy who works at—and maybe co-owns—the coffee shop down the street from me really makes the place. He makes the place like particularly comfortable chairs, good coffee, attractive employees or less easily defined qualities make other coffee shops especially pleasant places to be in. I’d say this guy is about forty-five or fifty. He has a pleasant face and a short, neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper moustache. His movements are precise and knowing; the bagel sandwiches he makes are layered, spread and cut with an uncommon care. When he greets me with a blank but vaguely pleasant stare at the counter he looks like he is now, or once was, capable of menace. But he hides the menace somewhere far behind his sad and handsome eyes that bring to mind the imagined chimerical offspring of Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. Sometimes his son comes in and helps out as best he can. The kid’s shy but he takes orders at the register for his dad to fill. He has his dad’s eyes and you can see in them that, though he’s bored and would probably rather be doing anything else, he is content just to be around his father, watching the sunlight gently burn through the window on a sleepy summer afternoon. So I keep coming back because of this guy and it’s mostly because of him that I’d recommend it. But don’t go there for the coffee because it’s not very good.