Losing the Places We Love (RIP, Flora Bar)
I will never walk past Madison and 75th without peering down into this space, and thinking of the many—many!—hours I spent inside, chipping away at book number three.
Flora Bar, the utterly perfect restaurant and coffee shop in the basement of the Met Breuer, has been closed since the pandemic began. This week the restaurant announced that they would not, in fact, reopen; that the temporary closure has become permanent. I’m probably the thousandth person on the Internet to write some version of this lament (a sign, in and of itself, of just how great Flora was!), but you know what? During these cold February days, I need a little escape. So please join me as I crank the old nostalgia machine into gear.
The truth, I guess, is that we knew this was coming. Long before we all became fluent in concepts like spike proteins and viral loads and mask-cne, the future of Flora was uncertain. The Met Breuer was scheduled to close in summer 2020, and the Frick Museum was slotted to move in. During one of those halcyon pre-pandemic days, I sat at the counter and asked my favorite barista if she knew whether Flora would still exist after the change in tenants. She shrugged; she didn’t know, nobody at the restaurant knew. I said the Frick would be idiots not to keep them open, and I stand by that statement.
It wasn’t just the food in the restaurant (the oysters mignonette served on an icy platter; the crunchy-salty-creamy surprise of pecans and blue cheese beneath the endive salad; the chewy sourdough bread served with soft butter). Nor the pastries in the cafe (the dreamy tomato focaccia, the tahini white chocolate cookie). Nor the way the light spilled through those massive glass walls. Nor the unlikely grace note of the courtyard, where you could savor your coffee in the sunshine. Nor the languid atmosphere that exists in any good museum cafe, the relaxation induced by a few hours of gazing at art. Nor the eternally friendly servers and baristas and hosts. Nor the perfectly calibrated music, beautiful but never distracting. Each of those factors contributed to the appeal—but for me the continued existence of Flora was more specific, and and more urgent, because by then it had become one of my favorite places to write.
Back in fall 2018, when I left my day job and began writing full time, I quickly realized what so many before me have realized, which is that working from home has its downsides. Namely, that you might go insane if you spend all day every day in the same confined space. (HAHAHA.) In order to get out of the house, I experimented with several different coffee shops in the neighborhood, but each was flawed in some way. No bathroom; lousy Wi-Fi; unbearable noise; weird smells. And then I found Flora, and Flora was perfect. In the year-and-a-half that followed, we were madly in love, and I often asked myself the question that people-in-love ask themselves, which is: what did I do to deserve this happiness?
I wrote a significant chunk of my third novel while sitting on a stool along that marble counter. I spent a lot of hours there. I have vivid memories of certain writing breakthroughs that occurred at that counter. I would be immersed in a scene, trying and failing and trying again to pin down a phrase, an observation, a line of dialogue, and then suddenly something would click, and I’d lift my head, slightly dazed to find myself back in the real world. The wall of wine bottles behind the counter; the smell of espresso; the screech of milk being steamed; the chatter of other customers. I found it helpful to be surrounded by real people while my mind was spinning away to the Cold War, to Paris and Moscow, to the parallel fictional universe that only existed in my imagination (and a messy Microsoft Word document). A lot of the novel has changed since I shared it with my agent and editor—and thank God for that!—but some of it hasn’t. Some of the sentences that will appear in the finished book are identical, word for word, to what I wrote at Flora. The very last line of the book is among them. I remember sitting at the counter and writing the very last line. At that moment I felt proud. A bit sad, too. It felt strangely anticlimactic, but also completely perfect, to stand up and go into the bathroom and get a little weepy in the privacy of the stall.
I’d often work at Flora two or three days a week. I had my regular routine. I’d show up in late morning. The museum guards would say hello, peer inside my bag, usher me in. I’d walk downstairs to the cafe, which was still quiet in those pre-lunch hours. Most days, Ramona was working behind the counter. My writing shift overlapped with her cafe shift. We got to be friends. In the past, I had been shy about these things. I had wanted to be one of those people who gets to know their barista or bartender, but I thought I wasn’t good at it. It was an old story I told myself; and sometimes those stories feel permanent; but they aren’t, not really, because nothing is permanent. I was discovering my new life, the writing life, to be a solitary life. There are beautiful moments of collaboration with your agent and editor and publisher, and there is the deep reward of eventually sharing the book with readers, but most days are quiet days. And I like the quiet—the quiet is necessary!—but not all the time. I craved other people’s voices, too.
When we need something, when we understand that we really need it, it can help us rewrite those stories. So there, in that light-filled cafe, I started to get over myself. One day I extended my hand across the counter and said: “I’m Anna, by the way. What’s your name?”
My favorite stool at the counter. A regular drip coffee with a splash of milk. A glass of water, too. Open the laptop. Close my email tab. Feel that inevitable dread while clicking on the Word document. I hate writing, why do I do this to myself? Because I love writing. I HATE IT. I LOVE IT. Jesus Christ, Anna, calm down! Just write ONE SENTENCE and then, if you need to quit, you can quit. Okay? Deal? Fine. Fine! And some days the writing felt impossibly sticky, but most days, after successfully meeting that just-one-sentence requirement (the caffeine starting to kick in, the pleasant buzz of the cafe fading into the background) I would get into a groove. Time would slip past. Eventually I would look up, and the cafe would be a little bit busier, and it would be time for another cup of coffee, and as I rose from my stool, Ramona would notice and start making my decaf Americano (my standard round-two order) without my even asking.
I loved the restaurant, too. Flora Bar was so much cooler than the usual uptown joints, and yet it didn’t feel like a downtown spot. It was always easy to get a reservation. And you wouldn’t, not for a second, mistake the older clientele for the downtown set. I loved sitting there, under that high ceiling, remembering that, just as much as the paintings and sculptures inside it, the building itself was a work of art. Eating there was a special occasion, but whenever there was a special occasion, Flora was my go-to. Date nights with Andrew. A splurgy Sunday brunch with a girlfriend. A festive pre-Christmas family dinner. Lunch with an interviewer to talk about my second book. The food, the wine, the desserts! I loved the restaurant, but I couldn’t go to the restaurant multiple times a week, not if I wanted to pay my rent. The cafe, on the other hand! Heaven was a real place, and it only cost a few dollars to visit.
**
That old shyness I mentioned, that hesitation to strike up a conversation with a stranger: one person who never had that problem was my grandmother. Her name was Catherine, but her nickname was Grandma Lovins. She earned that nickname, every day of her life. She never let the chance slip by. What’s your name? Where are you from? How’s your day going? She was simply too curious, and her heart was simply too big, to let a stranger remain a stranger. And strangers, in turn, seemed to sense that they could talk to her. She just radiated that vibe.
I was so lucky to learn, from her example, that these qualities were possible. And I’ve been lucky to see these qualities in other people. Sometimes it just takes a little quiet, a little slowness, to pick up on the people who radiate that vibe. Ramona was one of them. Her beautiful smile, her warm presence. A sense of safety. I guess I just knew, even as I introduced myself that very first time, that there was no way this woman would leave me twisting in the breeze.
**
I didn’t mean for this to happen, to start by talking about oysters mignonette and wind up talking about my grandmother! But you probably understand. So many places have closed during this pandemic. It doesn’t matter that, someday, there will be new bars and restaurants and coffee shops to take their place. The space you lost, the space you are mourning, it was meaningful because it bore witness to you. You existed in that bar or restaurant or coffee shop at a specific, fleeting moment in your life. The nostalgia is never just for the space itself. It’s also for whatever version of your former self existed within that space, and for the meaningful collisions that happened there, which sometimes—if you are lucky—caused that self to change.