Coffee-shop and Daffodil

Right, coffee-shop. Not any kind, but new coffee-shop. Coffee-shop 2.0. Where should I start? Fancy chairs, rich menu and decorations, professional baristas. Fancy chairs means there are not two of the same, each trying to out-pass the others in terms of looks and funkiness, made from 19 different materials, with the only thing they have in common being overall lack of comfort. But hey, you know, design!
Design also overflows in the menu, with long descriptions for coffee, in an attempt to make it as exciting as the chairs: single-source, double-roast, hand-picked, fair-trade, gluten-free (probably unlike some bits in the chairs), organic milk (anything but cow is acceptable), virgin cinnamon, sugar without any clarification about its virginity but definitely brown or cane. The list goes on and on. It is so big that you need a full-size wall to handwrite it all in chalk. Preferably by someone suffering from Parkinson, a doctor or someone that has not learned how to write yet. The former can be controversial, and doctors can be harder to find, but luckily you can always find the latter among the staff.
For each item on the menu there are sizes: from 0.2 ml, for a strong roast that will give you a mild heart-attack, all the way to a bucket. And nothing else in between. If they decide to squeeze some intermediary sizes, Latin words irrelevant to volume are to be used.
The other walls are adorned with local art, because, you know, support for the community and struggling artists. The art on display is like finger and macaroni paintings toddlers do in kindergarten when the teacher has forgotten to lock up the sweets cupboard. Swap the paint and macaroni for markers, pebbles, sequins and glitter and there you have it. Sometimes it is done directly on the wall or, for extra zest, on old posters, vinyl discs or any flat surface they were too lazy to take out to the bins. Well, there is a reason local art is local, and that reason is related mainly to quality. Still, the new coffee-shop remains hopeful that good intentions compensate whatever lacks in skill and broadcast it on every surface not taken by the menu: walls, cupboards, radiators, and sometimes even in the bathrooms.
Fortunately, at the end of the day, the outcome of the struggle remains contained locally. Those that are not local will be spared and will only have to deal with their own... and so on, and so on.
Baristas masterfully lead this whole symphony of sensations. You can tell them apart from the cattle by their impeccably dramatic uniforms of beanies and ironically non-matching aprons. Conjoined in a graceful dance around their immense silvery alchemy machine (the coffee maker), they are pushing buttons, scribbling furiously and unintelligibly the customer's name on paper or extruded polyester cups. Said cups are then fed by said baristas to the said machine, buttons are pushed, and the precious brown fluid fills them to the brim a couple of minutes later. Or only filled half-way through, to save room for the upcoming milk-foam art and the complimentary sprinkle or two of precious nutmeg or cinnamon (virgin, remember?) powder from a never-ending jar with a sieve on top.
To the untrained eye all this may look easy, but mastering such craft requires long time and suffering. The long time is for growing the beard and the suffering is for the tattoos, truck-tire earrings in the ears and piercings everywhere else. Attitude, mumbling, and a tank top are added to the mix, and the magnificent outcome is deemed worthy to handle the sacred coffee machine. And blissfully mix up the orders.
If you want to gain the barista's respect, you will ask politely for anything with at least six words in the title. And try to sound like it is not the first time you're reciting the drink's pompous title. Then say your name. Wait two to three minutes. Repeat your name. Wait four minutes more. Spell your name. Offer to write it yourself. Get mumbled or scoffed at. Pay. Wait patiently for other twenty minutes, even if there is no queue; art requires sacrifice. Quickly whiff or gulp to relish your concoction and step out before the local art and music irreversibly scratch your retina and eardrum. Thank you and have a blessed day. Or, if you get it, man, take out your MacBook and spend the next six hours clicking and basking in the potpourri of coffee flavour, visual art and music.
Wait! Oh, my! Silly me, but I forgot to mention the music.
When not violating the copyright off whales snoring or dolphins farting or some twigs cracking in the Amazonian forest, new coffee-shop music is another nod to local musicians. The kind of musicians that do not know how to play any musical instrument. Those that go the extra mile and do learn subsequently display their skill in the live band at their friends' weddings. Most of them do not. And they take pride in making their music on specialised devices. Devices with lamps for pure, analogue sound. Because digital sound is not pure, brother, you know? Anyway, the raw, analogue sound is then taken processed through ready-made filters, presumably for more purity, and then tuned on a computer connected to keyboards with many buttons. Whilst still remaining analogue. And pure. The pure end result is a monotonous series of beats of various frequencies dubbed over elevator music. If there was a woman available during the recording, you may spot a diluted lamenting blur in the song from time to time.

I met once such a "musician". He was named Daffodil and he was almost fifty. He used to describe himself as a new player and promising talent. I thought that would be a perfect name for this kind of artists. Daffodils are among the first flowers to bloom after a long harsh winter. They are supposed to symbolize rebirth, youth and creativity, awareness, and self-reflection. Or probably this is how they would describe themselves.
In reality they are the last flowers you would use in a bouquet and are usually thrown in for free as filler by florists before they get too wilted. Such perfect irony is indeed rare and to be heartily enjoyed.