The Taipei Kid

I love it when people here think that foreigners can’t understand Chinese, like tonight at the weird coffee shop where this guy was going on about 69ing his girlfriend while having coffee with his friend. The weird coffee shop is at the intersection of Wenhua/Shuangshi (Culture/Double Ten) Roads in Panchiao, by the Peking Duck store (the Chiang Tzu Tsui subway stop). Hi, idiot, I was sitting right behind you and could understand everything.

The weird coffee shop, which I have mentioned before, is weird because it doesn’t have a sign and it looks more like a restaurant. There are these weird statues in the windows, including Betty Boop on the first floor, and doorman statues in the window on a second floor, along with this futuristic pay phone and furniture. But you can’t go up and sit there, because it is for display, like a furniture showroom, but this place is actually a coffee shop, get it?

It really looks like a weird place where the Mad Hatter would come in for afternoon tea. You have to pay before you sit down, and they’ve got this futuristic touch-screen you can order with, even though the guy is standing right in front of you. They have a fancy glass pastry fridge filled with modems and other computer equipment, and another fancy fridge by the door, with a copy of Martha Stewart’s Living magazine displayed inside, turned to an article on passionfruit. Good luck finding the restroom. It is at the far end of the place and you pass one of those slowly spinning fans with three heads on the way. You slide open this giant, painted wooden door. It takes hours to slide it open. It is really frustrating, and the bathroom is in the basement across from a mirrored wall. This place is the Winchester Mystery House on crack.

Once in a while, there will be some men at a long table, doing computer work while using a large-screen TV as the monitor. These guys obviously own or help run the place. The drinks are the usual tea and coffee beverages. Nothing special there, but I do have to hand it to them to offer an environment that certainly breaks the Starbucks mold. Most of the coffee and tea drinks are bottomless and they have free wifi. Another bonus is that most of the time, not all, but most, it is free from screaming and running kids. I am not sure if smoking is allowed or not, but I don’t ever seem to smell any smoke. The place is big and the tables aren’t packed in like sardines.

I have had some issues with them. The manager warned me he doesn’t like gambling in his establishment when I came in to study statistics. He also moved a lamp back after I moved it closer to the table (even though it wasn’t hurting anything). That’s sort of weird, but then again, this place is quirky, to say the least. We’re so used to everything being branded, themed and run with a certain formula, and then a place like this comes along, and it isn’t even in a university district. Mark this one up as a weird little treasure of a coffee shop.