Two happenings coinciding with my thinking this entry up– 1. I’m about to see a friend and old roommate from uni for the first time in about 8 years, and 2. I recently read an entry about Waltham, Mass., from kateleigh’s blog ‘Cakes, Tea and Dreams: and the lost art of keeping secrets’. Both of these occurences reminded me of uni, and specifically, for some reason, time spent at the Curious Liquids Cafe.
The Curious Liquids Cafe is now closed. It has been since before I left uni. BUT, it was the BEST place to chill with a cup of coffee, interesting flavoured tea, or the BEST hot chocolate EVER. CLC was RAD. It was situated in a building not too far from the State House in Boston. In fact, it was on, or quite close to the Freedom Trail. It is now a Fox News station (see this neat article from GrubStreet).
I’d be lying if I said I went there all the time in Uni. However, the times that I DID are soldered into my brain with special awesome nostalgia wire. The STORIES. The best, and possibly, only truly awesome story comes from my freshman year. That year I had made friends with a group of people that were to disband and regroup in various ways. The main instigator, the de-facto leader, was James. James was roommates with Adam (who later switched schools), and Tom, a friend of mine from high school. James and Adam were on the crew team, and my friend Kristy was on the women’s crew team with Blanca, and they sortof knew James. Together, with our friend Dave, we were a ‘group’. At least for a while. Other people were on the periphery for a while, but we seemed to be the core.
The Story: Curious Liquids Night–OR, How We Left Adam Sleeping–OR, FREEDOM TRAIL!:
This story begins like many did that first year of uni–James calling me up. I met him, Adam and Dave on the T (the tram/subway in Boston). I remember standing there, holding onto one of the bars and staring at Adam. For some reason, on a random Wednesday night, he was already drunk. No one else was, so it seemed he got pissed on his own somewhere before we even went out. I’m not sure what that was about, and as I lost touch with him once he moved away (not that we were close–Adam didn’t really like any of us ‘girls’ in the group, and only came around to me once James told him I was ‘ok’), I will never know. So here we are, 3 sobers, and 1 shit-faced, on our way into town. We were going, it seemed, to the Curious Liquids Cafe–a magical place I’d visited only briefly before. When we got there, it wasn’t too busy, but still fairly full off college kids sipping whipped up coffees and pondering the meaning of life. We went downstairs (?), where there was an array of overstuffed sofas and chairs, all mismatched, and accompanied by little tables, some covered in Edward Gorey cartoons. There were books on shelves that one could peruse at leisure, and games–tons of board games and puzzles all over the place. It was awesome, it wasn’t that expensive, it was ‘cool’, and it was open LATE. CHA-CHING–every student’s dream.
That night–we sat around for ages talking. About what, I can’t for the life of me remember, but I know this–we had fun. Well, most of us. Adam fell asleep. We let him doze, and he occasionally roused, half-asleep, to mutter odd ramblings at us. They didn’t make sense, I remember that, and that we laughed. But the thing was, we weren’t upset with him or judgemental of him, for getting drunk (and not giving us any of whatever he had) and then falling asleep on us. No, we didn’t get upset. We left his ass.
That’s right. It was like, 1 in the morning, I think that’s when they closed, and they were clearing us lot out for the night. However, I recently found a flyer of their’s online, where it says it was open until 11PM. I’m SURE it was later than that. But hey, maybe the haze of nostalgia has warped my memory, OR this flyer was from a time when their hours were different–who can say? But back to the story–Adam was asleep, and we were getting evicted. James, Dave, and I looked at one another, got up, and left out the side entrance. From there, we RAN across to the little iron-railed park, and waited. Sure enough, the staff had managed to wake Adam up, and out he stumbled, cursing our names. We giggled, as silently as possible, until one of us–Dave I think–shouted something obscene at him. He reared around, looking for us, and finally we stumbled out of the park laughing our ASSES off. He was angry, but I think he saw the humour in it. I think there was a more personal cursing-out session before he got to the humour, but still–it got to him. We walked through the little park, and found part of the Freedom Trail. Dave, noticing it, proceeded to shout ‘FREE-DOM TRA-IIIILLLLL’ at the top of his voice.
Yes. We were those annoying teenagers–shouting out the wee hours on a random Wednesday night. And it might be lame, especially compared to others I could reminisce with you all about, but for some reason it was a GREAT NIGHT. And one I’ve obviously remembered. And I can’t help but think, that it was all a wonderful concoction of new friends, a new town, and a new place to hang out. Curious Liquids was indeed that. So, I salute her. And wish that I had visited her more often before her demise.
P.S. For those of you who remember and loved the Curious Liquids Cafe–there’s a Facebook page for you (p.s.s. I didn’t start this group, but check it out–if you’re interested):
Athena Pearl 
