We drove past a Panera Bread the other day, and I was reminded once again of my abiding love for the high falutin big box chain.

Stay with me here.

I'll tell it to you like I told it to Abby.  When I lived in Chicago, the weather was very cold, I was working very long hours, and I was very homeless.   At first I was just a little bit homeless, staying in a dirty nasty hostel.  Then I was a little more homeless, spending nights on a coworker's living room floor.  Eventually I was all the way homeless, sleeping in my car.

Did I mention I was working all the goddamn time? As a union organizer I was paid (significantly) less than minimum wage once you divided my stipend by the number of hours I put in.  Though I made enough to pay rent in one of the working class South or West Chicago neighborhoods, I certainly was in no position to scrape together a security deposit.  Apparently full time employees are the fastest growing group of homeless people.  Makes sense if you think about it, what with the bottom dropping out of entry level wages while housing stock of all grades continues to soar in price.  Recently, an article in my local newspaper business section recommended buying row homes in working class neighborhoods and renting them out because the profit margins are higher on such rental properties than for more expensive ones.  Ah, yes, just as I suspected, the prices for poor people are more jacked up than for anyone else.  Who shall I tell to go fuck themselves in this instance?

And why aren't I doing the internet research and linking to the sources for the outrageous claims contained herein?   Because this is not a serious political blog. This is me telling you a story about why Panera Bread makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

There are many things to love about my itinerant life.   I will not whine here, as I was wont to do a few years ago, about how I feel adrift in the world without a geographic identity.  No, if I wanted that badly enough, I could have made it happen.  If I move a few hundred miles in one direction or another every few years, I must like it.  To compensate for the resulting sense of disconnection, though, routines are serious business for me.

Thus it was that I found myself at Panera Bread most nights in the spring of 2002, curled up in a firm easy chair next to the gas fireplace, reading a newspaper somebody had left behind.  Even at the time, I was aware that the faux living room was a Disney World fake approximation of a coffee house, meant to be looked at, but certainly not actually sat in.  I should have been offended by it's co-opting of the urban experience, should have been insulted by a franchise that attempts to reproduce but only ends up mocking what independent dives have been doing so much better for so long.  Instead, the too perfectly coordinated fabrics and the carefully subdued atmosphere became a homey way station between my long evenings making cold calls and my early mornings doing paperwork or recruiting members door to door.  It was like listening to the radio with a teenage broken heart and finding comfort in the most insipid pop songs.  Your mind knows such trash is degrading the cultural landscape, but there you are, embracing the clichés, singing along. 

I stayed until they closed and then found somewhere to sleep.   Nobody spends their evenings in public spaces anymore, certainly not reading for hours, so I expected the employees to kick me out eventually.  I dreaded it, really, because I didn't want to look for another place to go.  Clever homeless people have four or five locations where they distribute their time, so as not to make a spectacle of themselves, so as not to wear out their welcome.  On leaving the office, I couldn't stand to strategize one bit more.  I ached to sit the same way in the same place, to find solace in any ritual.

You might suspect that in such a situation a twenty one year old girl would get to feeling a bit despondent.  The opposite happened for me, though.  Panera Bread those cold rainy nights was like my first long car trips; pride at my independence and resourcefulness overrode anything else I might have felt.  I carry what I need where ever I go.  I am my own home.

Comments

[Train-Guy]

I like Panera Bread too. I agree it does feel homey.

[Train-Guy]

P.S. Michele sent me

[Samantha]

I'm gonna have to try that bread!

Thanks for stopping by for Michele's Site of the Day!

[Sarcasmom]

Wow.I've never been homeless. Although this winter I may have to choose between heating my home and putting gas in the car to get to work to pay for it.

[Kimberly]

At my architecture firm (read: the firm where I work), which designs affordable (read: low-income) housing, we joke (read: lament, with a touch of humor) that we are designing housing for ourselves. Our main office is near San Francisco, and sadly, some of the younger employees there have incomes that would almost certainly qualify them to live in housing developments that they have helped design. And that's with a professional degree or two.

You'd like it here in Seattle. All sorts of people hang out in coffee houses until they close at night.

[yellojkt]

I'll never look at a Panera Bread the same. The one at our local mall is always so crowded that any attempting to loiter would be peer pressured out of a table pretty quick.

The other Panera Bread near me, by the Walmart, never seems busy, so I'm going to have to keep an eye on who seems to be a fixture just lounging around in the comfy chairs.

The real loiterers in my area are at Borders because that is the only place in town open past 9:30. The family unit has spent many a weekend night hanging out in the cafe until closing time.

[InterstellarLass]

This is a great post. I admire your independence.

['mouse]

Great post. As always.

I've never stayed late out of homelessness, but during high school when I lived alone, I used to hang out a the Brillig Works by the Univ. of Colorado campus until closing time out of sheer lonliness.

[mcbeth]

I've a good friend who manages a Panera location. He'd be tickled to know that his shop meant something to someone.

He's that kind of guy.