3 Days at Pane e Circo
An address in the Universe of Meaning
This is a deviation of sorts from the current newsletter series. Sometimes things ought to be written. Instead of choosing what to do in the world, the world sends a clear sign that something is being chosen for you.
In another way - it’s no diversion at all. It’s a sign that you’re doing your work because you can’t help but do it. When you think about it long enough, you realize that in some way this has to be true because you only get to make one choice in any given moment. You might think you have an infinite amount of choices, but really you don’t. You do what you were going to do all along. What we repeatedly do is who we are.
And so it is that I find myself writing about cafe cultura because I can’t not write about it. Specifically, about 3 days at Pane e Circo - perhaps 3 of the best cafe days of my 33 years of life. When the moment begins to fade, perhaps I will think about it differently - but I doubt it.
I doubt it because of how interesting the town it sits in is, and how it’s changing. Of Pete and talking to strangers. Of my espresso companion, and wife, who is a mix of impressive and humble that few figure out how to pull off with such grace (including me). Of the barista man that felt it worth getting to know us. Of the classic, timeless aesthetic that I’ve come to see as my favourite cafe aesthetic1, and of the Slavs, Italians, and Poles who sat beside us each morning - as I expect they do every morning.
3 days at Pane e Circo - Halifax rising - an address in the Universe of Meaning.
Please enjoy and thank you for reading.
“And I’ve begun to firmly believe the biggest issue for happiness is knowing your address in the universe of meaning. Or knowing who you are, and why you’re here, and what will come once you’re gone.” - Chris Arnade
Halifax Rising (an address in the Universe of Meaning)
I’ve been coming to Halifax for as long as I can remember. Specifically in summer, to the shores of the Atlantic - St. Margaret’s Bay - looking out to Lukey’s Island. We’d waste away summer days sailing, swimming, riding, and walking - never properly hot - always an edge of cool from the ever-present Atlantic.
Over time places change - that’s the natural state of things - and Halifax has changed more than any other town on the East Coast. The beautiful thing about places is they change as the people do. I feel like I’ve lived two entirely different lives - there is before 23 years old and after - in the same way that Halifax has lived two different lives. When you shed your old skin in favour of what you inevitably becomes - people and places both - it feels exactly right and how it was always going to be. Halifax is becoming precisely what it means to.
Today, Halifax is cosmopolitan, like no other town in our part of the world. In fact, it isn’t even close. Saint John, Charlottetown, and St. John’s still feel as they once did. It’s not to say that they aren’t changing and growing too, but the rate of change is somehow different than Halifax rising, evolving, growing, building, investing, and selling to the rest of the world because the world wants what Halifax has. When there is a tower downtown called the Skye being built by the United Gulf company, there is a larger game afoot.
With that growth comes people and productivity gains. Canada has largely stalled on the latter, and so we’ve had to press pause on the former, to balance the scales. This is painful in the short-term, but wise in the long-term. Halifax is visibly young, diverse, and vibrant. On an average walk on an average day (the true measure of economic development) - it feels more like Boston than Charlottetown or Fredericton.
There is a dynamism at exactly the level you want your dynamism - at the SME level - the folks that make stuff, sell stuff, and employ most of us. The kind of dynamism that my collaborators David Campbell and Don Mills have come to love, and the kind of dynamism our region has to return to if we are going to balance the productivity charts that are up-and-to-the-right-in-the-wrong-direction. Take a moment and sit with the chart below - yikes.
Cafe Cultura (Talking to Strangers)
There is a 1:1 correlation with dynamism at the small business level and the growth of the cafe scene in a place. This is base level entrepreneurship and it has become the central guiding principle and pillar of my life. I’ve beat this horse to death - and you’ve read about this countless times from me - but I will write about it until my dying days because of how important it actually is to making places people want to live in.
Cafe Cultura is proof to me of just how wrong something is with us right now. Something sinister, despair inducing, and scary, but if we speak about it publicly, and see it in ourselves, we have a chance at avoiding the brink. If you asked me to speak honestly, I’m not sure we have that much time left to do this because you know by now that I believe (like Chris Arnade does) that cultures are path-dependent and if we fall down that slippery slope there is no stopping the momentum until we make contact with firm ground (or a brick wall).
Arnade’s latest was a melange of essays written from China (also undeniably rising). My favourite short piece was a response to the seeming growth of extremism in political and social life in America. Something is really wrong with our meaning making machine and young people are finding meaning in divisiveness and extremism because that’s what happens when you create a void of meaning in daily life.
At Pane e Circo, on our first morning, there was an oddly dressed, pleasant looking gentleman at the bar seats wearing a white t-shirt that read ‘Talk to a Stranger Week.’ The organizing entity was one called Genwell, which exists “…to address the issues of social isolation, disconnection and loneliness through the power of human connection.” My wife being who she is, couldn’t help but introduce herself and find out more. Naturally, that quickly evolved into a recorded interview with Pete - seemingly wonderful Pete - about why we were in town and why she felt the pull to introduce herself.
Even barista man was into whatever was happening - the cafe is the perfect place for such a thing - as we debated the merits of cafe au lait vs flat white and cranberry vs raspberry.
The Slavs, Poles, and Italians
Doing things like this is a superpower of hers. You probably have a bizarre superpower that you’ve had since birth but you’re afraid to tell people about. I don’t recommend the latter, because the former is what makes you you, and you have no choice but to be you and so you might as well start doing it. What falls away after you decide to do this authentically is precisely what was meant to fall away - like shedding the skin of a snake. It has to happen and it’s not your job to deny it because you didn’t make it. It’s an allowing, not a trying.
Mine is an eerie sense of geography - of people and place. My ear for language and my eye for phenotype is so bizarrely attuned that I’m rarely wrong and I have no idea what to make of that. It’s probably as simple and practical as having poured over globes, encyclopedias, and National Geographics as an odd, emotional child, or it could be as esoteric and supernatural as being blessed with a feeling of ‘at home’ anywhere on earth (and I’ve been around the block).
And so it was delightful to learn that the Halifax cafe circuit kicks off at 6:30am (on par with Toronto and Boston, and a full hour before my hometown), and I knew exactly what that would mean. It would mean I would be there as close to the open as my beloved wife and coffee companion would allow, and we would likely be one of the few english speakers there, and almost definitely the only people under 40. I don’t know how to explain this other than that both of the latter categories know how important gathering is and not one of them was alone on a device.
On day 2 at Pane e Circo I knew within seconds the group of old Slavs to our immediate right do this everyday simply because that’s how the day starts. There is no need to go beyond that. They were naturally tanned (my lifelong jealousy of the fit and healthy nordics from cold, but sunny places - unlike my ancestors), smelled vaguely of cigarette smoke (a health food if done correctly), talked loudly in their mother-tongue and loved to laugh. Forgive me for being hard on us domestics but these guys have a fundamental understanding of what makes a life worth living, and what makes a place worth living in, that we have somehow lost and we have to reclaim if we are to survive as a culture.
Even the fourth of their quartet - who clearly couldn’t make it on Day 3 - called to check in, and the leader of the bunch put him on speaker phone so they could howl with laughter from afar - probably a doctor’s waiting room or something of the like. Morning coffee at Pan e Circo is not to be missed and so picking up the phone to check in with the lads is the natural thing to do. As natural as breathing for communal cultures - and I mean this almost literally. Individualism and aloneness barely registers as a concept. My East African brethren - having lived among them in the summer of 2012 - would hardly even understand what you mean by it. It’s unthinkable in a way that, ironically, becomes much more thinkable (and likely) if they immigrate to North America - and that should tell us something about our built environment.
Two old ladies - Poles (trust me) - made up the small bistro set three to the right of our Slavic brethren and they laughed just as much and maintained (because of their vintage) kawa czarna - coffee, strong, short and black (unclear whether they found their way into some grounds at the bottom of the cup as they’d like it but they seemed to be enjoying it nonetheless).
One turned to the other and in heavily accented english said ‘Yes! Have a muffin - you look like you need a muffin.” To which the other howled with laughter - having no sense of offense whatsoever, which in our culture is all but impossible because we’ve forgotten the better angels of our nature and assume, by default, that there is offense to be had around every corner. This cannot sustain - the center will not hold - and we will commit cultural suicide if we can’t reverse course.
To Halifax rising - to an address in the Universe of Meaning - and a cafe scene that is incredibly healthy for the size of the city. To Pete, talking to strangers, barista man, the Slavs, Poles, and Italians - and to 3 Days at Pan e Circo - I can’t wait to be back.
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All we need is a point of view, a set of tools, and a lot of time.
See you on the road.
And aesthetic does matter regardless of how pretentious we might think it - something curator and builder extraordinaire Laura Weil and I agree violently on.