Thursday, February 28, 2008

Scene This Week In...

Jessie and I connected on some weird coffee shop vibe this week. I had decided to do a post about the Starbucks Café in the Barnes & Noble bookstore in the Long Gate Shopping Center in Ellicott City. I needed to park someplace for a hour before I went back to my daughters elementary school. This bookstore is my favorite local bookstore and one of my least favorite coffee shops. The staff is friendly enough but the wifi costs four bucks for two hours. At 9:30 AM on a Thursday morning the place was dead.

I am willing to bet that was not the case in downtown EC. As previously reported here and further confirmed in today’s post on Hometown Columbia, the place to grab coffee and free wifi connection in Ellicott City is the Bean Hollow coffee shop. On the other hand, Bean Hollow isn’t a very good bookstore.

The Scene This Week in Columbia is the sculpture “When The Wind Comes.” I was driving through Thunder Hill last weekend when I noticed this large sculpture in front of Thunder Hill elementary school. The plaque at the base of the sculpture identifies the sculptor as Rodney Carroll and indicates that it was erected in 2000.

I love discovering stuff like this. When I was a senior at Wilde Lake High School one of my best friends lived in a house directly across the street from the school. I was in that neighborhood all the time. It was fun to drive through it again and discover this piece of public art.

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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 29, 2008 12:43 AM

    Hey, WB. I just heard a new term today from Tweeter @shashib: "coincidensity." Looks like you and I had some coincidensity on our coffee shop posts. FTR (I think that means "for the record"), Bean Hollow doesn't have wifi, free or paid. I *heard* from a wifi mooch, that Sarah and Desmond's in EC and the bakery/cake shop on Main Street do.

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  2. AnonymousFebruary 29, 2008 1:06 AM

    Love the shot from Thunder Hill Elementary! Good stuff going on outside as well as inside at that wonderful school...

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  3. AnonymousFebruary 29, 2008 2:48 PM

    So you found the one time of day/week the B&N is not packed. Good info to log deep in the recesses of my empty mind.

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  4. wordbonesMarch 01, 2008 1:25 PM

    iconic xer,

    You know, I didn't think that Bean Hollow had free wifi but then I went and misread "wifi free zone" which my mind initially read as free wifi!

    I get it now. In fact I was in Bean Hollow just this morning and it was hopping. Not a laptop in sight.

    I like coincidensity. I'll add it my bone pile.

    Candace,

    For example?

    Tom,

    Look, I'll admit, the empty cafe at B&N in EC was a bit of an anomaly. Most times I've been in there it has been pretty packed. I guess that is what jumped out at me. It would appear that on Early weekday mornings you can get a table and don't have to deal with lines.

    Just more fill from a fellow empty mind...

    -wb

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  5. AnonymousMarch 01, 2008 4:43 PM

    My bad, WB. I know the value of a hyphen. Bean Hollow is a wifi-free zone. :o)

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