A Good Ritual
No Ordinary Habit
The closest I get to a gym is visiting El Condor, the wonderful coffee shop next to the West Village Equinox. They have a great Ethiopian roast (medium body, faintly acidic, if you care about these things). Suddenly they closed and I was in a dark, decaffeinated place. I sent them a desperate message on Instagram and one of the owners, Nicolas, agreed to meet in front of Three Lives and we could transact: cash for coffee.
This arrangement struck me as delightful and very neighborly, a rare equation in New York. When I got home I realized that these were whole beans—they had always been ground before. Now I had never ground my own coffee. This seemed like an unnecessary added layer of morning complication. But I was in no position to argue. I got a small German grinder and things were fine, enjoyable in fact. Then I got a better American grinder and now I’m a grinding fool and love the whole crazy process. I can’t imagine going back to the old way. It’s not that I think the coffee tastes better; I just like the process.
Everybody draws the line somewhere and the Japanese draw the line far out, because they want to make things the best way and don’t care how long it takes. Other people just want their coffee fast. Similarly, some men shave with an electric razor. Others use a blade and even a brush. Better yet they go to a barber and get a proper shave with a hot towel.
Rituals come and go—do you still get the newspaper every morning? Most people roll over and look at their phone. That’s less a ritual and more of a habit. So we head out to buy the Weekend FT and the Sunday Times from our favorite newsstand. Now that feels like a ritual again.
How do you start a ritual? Do something twice and make it nice. My dad makes a cheese soufflé on Christmas Eve (he wears velvet slippers while he does it). I’m not sure how that started but now it’s part of the holiday. I wear a large straw hat when I do a big grill at our cabin. This invokes gaucho expertise I don’t have. But now it’s my grilling hat and when I put it on I know I’m going to be standing in front of a fire for five hours. Good times!
I have a weakness for annual rituals, like the watching Masters (while drinking Riesling) and for seasonal fishing trips (England mayfly hatch). But simple rituals are good too. The New Yorker used to come to my old apartment every Monday. I would walk over to the Rusty Knot (RIP) and sit at the front booth and text everybody I wanted to see and read the magazine until they showed up. Now that’s a ritual (though a young man’s ritual, to be sure).
A ritual can be shared—meet your friend for breakfast every week. Once it’s in the book then you count on it. This ritual measures friendship. I used to go the second Yankees game every year (it was always a matinee and more mellow than Opening Day) and head to the bleachers with my friend Wyatt. In the old Yankee Stadium those seats were $5 (really they were backless benches) and you could sit anywhere and still drink beer in the bleachers the way God intended.
Sometimes you grow out of rituals. Mercifully I don’t attend South by Southwest any more. But the first year I gave it up was hard. I had to admit I was too old to be walking up South Congress with my ears ringing at three in the morning. You accept your age and say Adios, Austin!
I like travel rituals: Go to a certain restaurant the first night you’re in London or your favorite cafe in Paris and it really feels like you’ve arrived. I completely understand when friends visit New York and head straight to Balthazar or the Odeon or Minetta Tavern. These places feel like they’re Manhattan personified, intensified.
Mundane rituals make up our daily life. So let’s elevate them. Get a wildly indulgent coffee cup that brings you joy. Use a cocktail pitcher you love. Go to the market every week. I use my beloved rice cooker every Saturday (it’s only allowed on the weekends or I go rice crazy and have it for every meal).
Rituals measure time—what has happened since we were last here, you ask. But other rituals, humble or high-minded, unfold every day so they might as well be better, just slightly better, than they need to be.
My wife and I were lucky enough to work in Napoli for three years, 2016-2019. Like most of what is Napoli and its surrounding environs, the region is a study in contrasts. So, we lived about 700 metres from this dilapidated “corner store”, a place that always struck me as a Camorra outpost. One weekend morning relatively early in our first year living there, I was strangely restless and courageous and so decided to explore this den of perceived ill-repute. The little metal sign, rusting and half-hung in the window proclaiming “caffè”, seemed like a good bet; I was and am a coffee nut, and in Italia, especially the south, “caffè” was life (along with dolce). So, I screwed up my courage, threw on something casually elegant (as one does in Napoli when one goes out for caffè … or groceries), and trudged up the garden tractor track masquerading as a two lane regional feeder … and inside I went. I knew enough Italian to order my caffè and a dolce, so was confident. I was floored by the bustle and joy once inside; this was an espresso bar that showed the world a grocery store but really, was all about caffè. The massive and gleaming Gaggia was the centre of a swirl of activity. I asked for an espresso and this seemingly 12 year young man (I found out later he was 23), listened attentively to my mangled Italian order, asked in flawless English if he could make a suggestion (I said yes), and introduced me to the big brother to my before-then morning staple of a cappuccino: a caffè con latte. It was heaven. For the next almost three years I would head to the corner store every Saturday morning, say hello to Procolo and Mama, and enjoy my CCL. I still make CCLs every Saturday (and Sunday), eight years later, using a Bialetti stove-top espresso and a stove-top stainless steel milk urn. It is a weekend ritual for both my wife and I (J often makes the CCLs, if I am off at the market), that re-connects my spouse and I, grounds us in each other for an hour of chatting and savouring, and provides a indulgent time of calm and enjoyment.
Damn near every Friday at 5PM for the last 10 years, you could find me at the bar at Taqueria Del Sol off Cheshire Bridge in Atlanta, enjoying a margarita. The perfect way to forget the troubles of that week and ease into the weekend. The regulars and bartenders became friends and confidants over those years. My last Friday there before leaving the big city happened to coincide with the longest tenured barkeep’s retirement. It was my favorite ritual, and I was sad to see it come to an end. Still looking for my new watering hole!