Fully Caffeinated

An icon is gone: the Chit Chat Cafe at the Pacifica Pier has been demolished. A few days ago people noticed a big crack next to and under the cafe. Within hours that crack in the pier's foundation had widened and chunks of cement were falling into the sea. Soon the walls of the cafe were coming apart. The area was fenced off; the owners were not allowed inside to recover their cash box or anything else. Yesterday morning bulldozers razed the building.

Although the poor condition had been obvious for years it seemed to happen out of the blue, no strong storm or earthquake to blame, just time and failing materials. No one knows if the pier itself can be saved. There's no money lying around Pacifica's coffers ready to be spent on it, that seems clear. The pier was built in 1973. It's been closed off and on since I started going there in the late 90s because storms do occasionally damage it. It's heavily used for crabbing and fishing. I've never seen it empty when open. The Chit Chat Cafe was once a bait and tackle shop. Locals still came in to buy bait on occasion.

I went there often to drink coffee and watch the waves. I was there last week, in fact. I loved walking along the beachfront, too, out to Mori Point. Once I started taking classes at the Royal Bee Yarn shop a block away I often stopped by to get a late coffee before class started. My favorite barista was a woman in her 40s who was a metalhead and we frequently swapped concert stories and band recommendations; she loved that I was into K-pop and I loved that she was deep cuts all across the metal band spectrum. I hoped Bellis would one day come to California so I could introduce them. I hope she finds a new job that she loves as much as she loved making their famous sandwiches and fancy espresso drinks for the clients.

The pier is probably more important to the community than the cafe, but the Chit Chat was certainly a popular destination for everyone in that area. There are other coffee shops around, in fact there's another Chit Chat Cafe a mile north along the esplanade, but it's not as funky and it's right by a shopping center. I will probably start going there next time I need to sit brooding over my knitting mistakes while looking at the sea, drowning my sorrows with a perfectly foamy cappuccino. But it just won't be the same.