Back to Bongo Java

There was a time - a decade ago - when I had coffee at Bongo Java almost every day.  In fact, I had never had coffee, or even liked coffee, until I started rolling JP into Bongo in the stroller, the legendary Baby Jogger City Elite.

If memory serves, JP and I started going to Bongo on Sunday mornings.  Saturday mornings were mine and I normally went for a long run in Shelby Bottoms.  Sunday mornings were for Jude and while she went for a walk at Radnor Lake or simply relaxed, JP and I had breakfast at Bongo Java.  

It was our time together, every Sunday morning, and as I sit at Bongo this morning - for the first time in years - I'm dumbstruck by the waves of nostalgia washing over me as I sip my coffee, listen to the music, and watch a few people scattered at tables, talking quietly with each other.  Honestly, I've sat at every table in Bongo multiple times, often with JP and later, Joe, sleeping in the stroller beside me.  

The presence of JP's toddler ghost is palpable.  My mind is playing tricks on me, for sure, because everywhere I look, if I look hard enough, I can see JP or Joe as they were at age 2, or 3, or 4, or 5, and so forth and so on.  So many happy memories in this place.  Bongo Java is, in many ways, where I felt the most like a father in the early days.  Eating breakfast with my son or stopping in for a Saturday afternoon cup of coffee while JP or Joe napped in the stroller.

For the longest time, I planned on writing an essay about Bongo Java - maybe I still will - entitled "How a Coffee Shop Became the Center of My Universe."  I thought about it a lot.  Still do, actually.

My memories of this place are so happy, I think, because of where I was in my life.  As I've written before, my Bongo days were a time of innocence and a time when anything was possible.  

What drew me back this morning - a Saturday - is that a friend tipped me off this week to the fact that someone at Bongo Java - probably the owner, Bob Bernstein, had pulled out a framed photo of the boys I game to our favorite manager, EJ, year and years ago.  

The photo was taken at Frothy Monkey in 12South when we were displaced for a couple of weeks while Bernstein replaced the front porch.  The boys were, I'm guessing, 7 and 3, and I told them to look sad in the photo.  JP held up a sign that says, "We miss EJ.  @bongojava."  It's hilarious, actually, and now it's on the wall at Bongo, below another black and white photo of a dad and his infant son laughing at a table in Bongo.

In the earliest of my Bongo Java days and for the longest time thereafter, my drink of choice was a Mood Elevator.  Chad was the first barista I met here, well over 15 years ago, and he turned me on to it.  A double iced mocha with hazelnut, two shot, very light on the mocha.  

Chad was fierce looking and intimidating, with pointed side burns, covered in tattoos with a lot of piercings.  But he had a huge smile and he loved JP, always engaging with him and making him smile.  Chad had personal problems and after he left Bongo, I heard he accidentally ran a samurai sword through a roommate - who survived miraculously - in an argument.  But that's another story, to day the least.

JP and I used to sit in the back at the same table most of the time.  It backed up onto the window seat, so he could sit up high, see everything, and look out the window, too.  There were only three or four tables back there so it kept us from disturbing anyone if JP was feeling particularly rambunctious.  The back room is closed off, now, and used as some type of a supply closet, which is a little sad.  

As I reflect back, I think something was lost when Bob Bernstein replaced the front porch.  He raised prices, as I recall, which drove some of the longtime regulars customer away, like Ms. Joyce.  It just didn't feel the same when he reopened.  Also, it caused me to branch out and try different coffee shops, Frothy Monkey and Portland Brew in 12South and 8th & Roast.  

The biggest thing, though, is Bob Bernstein slowly but surely ran off all of the old heads, the baristas who really cared about making good coffee, and replaced them with Belmont undergraduates who didn't care a whit about coffee.  Chuck, Hunter, Taylor, Adam, and finally, EJ, all gone.  That's what ended my run at Bongo Java, really.  The people that I knew and that loved my boys were let go, one by one, over a few months' time.  

Still, there is a magical feeling in this place for me.  The sense of nostalgia is so overwhelming I can feel it.  I don't think there is any one place where I have as many happy memories as I have here, at these table, inn this coffee shop, that once upon a time was indeed the center of my universe.