Deitrich's Coffee - 3:50pm

It's hard to be bohemian these days, I imagine. Hard to catch that Kerouac vibe on frappuchinos and non-fat lattes.

A young man sits at a table on the patio with long unkempt hair and a valiant attempt at a goatee. He picks carefully at his guitar, studying his fingers on the frets the way a novice dancer watches his own feet. His t-shirt sports a minimalist picture of an electrical outlet.

His friends sit nearby with an air of rebellious indifference in their unfashionable clothes. One sketches tattoo designs in an oversized sketch book, his weak double chin dotted with acne and his eyes partially obscured by greasy bangs. A third, with hair down to his waist, sits reading a paperback with yellowed pages. Catcher in the Rye no doubt.

At the table to their left, an elderly man sits doing his daily crossword. On their right, a natty businessman does his taxes on his Apple iBook. But such is the fate of the 21st century beatnik. It was enough for their fathers and grandfathers to sit in smoky cafes thinking revolutionary thoughts. It is much harder for them, when the cafe has been franchised and the thoughts mainstreamed into a high school course on American lit.