Tea Lounge

I am studying for the LEED exam. The deadline before they change the test format is March 31st, and I have decided that I need to take the old test before the shift happens (so everything I did for the LEED Holiday Inn Hotel doesn't become irrelevant.) It's gonna be a big study crunch, the likes of which I haven't done since college. I have a reference binder - huuuuuuge - with over 400 pages of information to go through.

Back in college I used to frequent coffee shops to study. I have font memories of Spider House, Metro, Flipnotics, Mozart's.... those were the days. I would find a place where I could just read and chillax. You know, get some coffee and serenity.

I've gone to the Tea Lounge a couple of times before. I want to like it, I really really do. I want to adore this beautiful place that's only four blocks from my house. Sometimes I think the coffee shop culture of New York doesn't quite mesh with the coffee shop vibe of Austin, because there is just something a leeetle off. Not sure what it is.

The Tea Lounge is theoretically great. Plush couches, some tables & chairs, dark lighting, and most patrons are on their laptops. They have a pretty good coffee and herbal tea menu, as well as many sandwiches and pastries. Supposedly they serve alcoholic drinks in the evenings, though I haven't taken advantage of that yet.

I ordered a large coffee and a small grilled cheese sandwich. The coffee was a little bitter, nothing spectacular.  My sandwich was okay too, and managed to really hit the place that a grilled cheese should. It had cheddar, so you can't really go too wrong there. And for $3.25, it was more than acceptable.

The problem to me is that all issues with food an coffee taste are irrelevant if there is a good vibe. After all, that's why I go to coffee shops. I know there are some lovely coffee snobs out there with exquisite palettes who will crucify me for saying that. And I understand that there area really good types of espresso, and that the crap I usually drink is but mediocre brown water with tons of milk and sugar. Whatever. I like the vibe. I aim to find the right combo of people watching, couches, interesting music, and that je ne sais quoi that usually somehow allows me to focus on getting work done.

And for some reason the Tea Lounge doesn't quite serve the purpose. It should. The decor has that perfect slacker indie sensibility. It really reminds of Ruta Maya (mostly the old downtown Austin location), but a little smaller. There are many things that could have been my problem today. Maybe it's that the it was so full that the only place to sit was an overstuffed couch that I had to share with another guy in very close proximity to many other people. Maybe it was that my seat smelled of B.O. as if a homeless person had been there for many hours. Maybe the weird smell was the guy sitting across from me. Maybe it's that there were too many laptops, and after a while it crossed the threshold where there just weren't enough human voices (that last part is not the Tea Lounge's fault, just something more that has changed since my college days). Maybe it was that my table was way to low for me to set my binder down and read comfortably.

Not sure what it was, at some point these seemingly insignificant things added up to become an actual issue. I'll be back for sure, specially to check out the bar, but I'm not sure about trying to study there. I'll try some other places and see if they work better.