Ellington

We’re beautiful when we go to cafes: We smile more, laugh more, and somehow inspire everyone sitting around us more.

Especially around midterms, the cafes we all frequent as an alternative to the libraries become more vital to what makes us push forward and press on. Simply put, late-night cafe-goers inspire me — they’ve changed over and over again the way I see my work and its place in the world.

Together, they are this week’s Man of the Hour.

This unspoken community of cafes becomes exaggerated at night. Any other time of the day, cafes only shed light on our perceived differences and even, I’ll venture, the provincial animosities we might have toward one another. Under the cover of the midnight hours (those hours between 10:30 p.m. and 1 a.m. that, despite what the analog clock claims, still feel like the fateful midnight), we have to forget the little frustrations because we realize the person sitting a foot or less away from us is in the same situation. He, too, is running his fingers through his hair in frustration over a small calculus assignment due in the coming hours. She, too, is tapping her foot nervously for that perfect word (perfidious?), suddenly lost in the depths of a tall cup of Pike Place Roast. Black coffee to drink away the blues, Ella Fitzgerald would croon.

And that reminds me: Pay special attention to today’s illustration. When the illustrator, Kevin Shaw, and I were discussing artwork for this week’s column, we drew inspiration from an Archibald Motley, a great painter of the Harlem Renaissance. It’s particularly relevant because I’ve always considered the Harlem Renaissance a key period in the development of the late-night cafe in America. The Renaissance gave cultural pertinence to the need for people to come together and share their sorrows, troubles, and waywardness.

This is my ode to the late-night cafe-goer. Frequenting cafes late in the evening revitalizes one’s soul and ultimately make us even more thirsty for community and companionship. If you’ve ever been to Trabant or the U-Village Starbucks, among others, during the midnight hours, I thank you from the bottom of my homework-weary heart — you’ve created a whole new home for me. I come in with a heavy heart and a tired mind, not believing I could possibly take more, but my spirit lightens when I see the faces of Archibald Motley’s cafe dancers, jazz singers, and coffee drinkers. Yes, his characters have been replaced by MacBook users and New York Times readers, but I’m positive the spirit of overcoming hardships still grows there.

If we ever see one another from across the cafe floor, raise your mug. I’ll raise mine in return, knowing we are members of the same community.

Reach opinion columnist

Lauren Kronebusch at

opinion@dailyuw.com.