While my better half was away doing real work, I took the opportunity to head up to Pound, a new hipster coffeehouse on Pennsylvania Avenue. While the coffee is not nearly as good as that at Peregrine Espresso, the ambiance is certainly more inviting to sitting down and staying for a while (though this may be a bad thing for the long term financial prospects of Pound; Peregrine’s ability to get someone inside, make them a great cup of coffee, and then get them out the door is certainly a recipe for better financial turnover). I brought my laptop with me, but the wireless at Pound was password protected and I felt too embarrassed to get up and ask what the password is. Of course, it might not even be available to the public. They don’t have cash registers or credit machines, just iPads and Squares to calculate tax and run credit cards. Certainly they’d want that running on a secure network.

Anyway…

The place manages to be bright and airy without sacrificing the dim and cramped vibe one expects from a coffeehouse. I know the first adjectives are pretty much entirely in contradiction to the second two, but I stand by my statement. If you are suffering from some sort of brain lock from that, pick up a copy of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and read until he starts talking about antinomial thought and then come back and complain to me if you still don’t understand, but keep in mind, I will be quizzing you about the book, so make sure you’ve really read it and made a good faith effort to understand what Kant is trying to say. And also keep in mind that I could just tell you that Critique of Practical Reason is part of a philosophical trilogy and insist that you read the first book, Critique of Pure Reason, and call me back in two weeks. This is all for your own good. If you can’t be bothered to read canonical works of western thought before pissing and moaning about me holding two seemingly contradictory beliefs (bright, airy – dim, cramped), then I’m not sure I can be bothered to listen to your small minded complaints.

Pound also has a small but interesting menu. I haven’t eaten anything yet, but they seem to be trying to focus on just a few things, so there’s more chance they’ll get it right than if they tried to cram the supplies to run a full kitchen in their narrow space.

So Pound basically gets a conditional thumbs up from me. I’ll bring a book here and notebook here every so often and settle down for a while, though until I (or they) figure out a way to get me some free wireless, I won’t be bringing my work here on regular basis to have lunch or a snack and a large coffee. And if all I want is a really good cup of coffee and to get back home or wherever I’m going, I’ll still go to Peregine.