Mudrakers Cafe

Ah, control. When I was a teenager I had this great T-shirt with kitschy adolescent quote on the back: Control is an Illusion. Picking up the newspaper today, it seems, as Bob Dylan said, “I was so much older then/ I’m younger than that now.” The first is, “Fed ‘difficulties’ abound.” The first notch in my T-shirt’s sleeve, this article bemoans the inability of our government to control the current financial crisis. I am still baffled by the media’s belief, apparently shared by politicians, that they can somehow “solve” America’s financial difficulties. Didn’t they read my T-shirt? Next is, “Techie with a grudge,” an article about a somehow endearingly defiant SF employee making six figures who decided to hack the city’s payroll and communications network, denying access to all officials. Underneath those, I read about national furor over The New Yorker’s impending Obama cover and the possibility of Belgium’s breakup as a country. I mean, governments seem to be having a rough time with their image today. The illusion dissolves.

At one point, journalists prided themselves on being “muckrakers.” Riffing on this idea, today’s coffee destination calls itself Mudrakers. Mudrakers Café, at the corner of Telegraph and Stewart in Berkeley, has fantastic pleather chairs, cafeteria-style tables, and the strangest 80’s rock grooving through the morning. I got the feeling I was back in college, stopping in for a slice of pizza between classes. A sign on their window boasts organic, fair trade coffee, but beyond that I had no idea what it was. It was tasty, but even though I drank it in-house I had to use this styrofoam cup. The coffee cake, however, was moist and rewarding. There is a lot of well-lit space, free Wi-fi, and a fun display of Arab-American art on the walls, but somehow I couldn’t shake the cafeteria feeling, so it was hard to be comfortable or stimulated. Folks came in and out without much fanfare, and it felt like a good place to stop in for a break from work. If someone would please turn off that pop-jazz saxophone. But then, control is an illusion.

Enjoy your break slow. After all, if the front page tries to control our morning we’ll be broke, stolen, misrepresented, and maybe, if Belgium is any flagship, without government. Perhaps control is an illusion…

Breakfast in the Bay: Making sense of waking up since Tuesday, 2008.