Writers’ Spaces is a series that reviews — you guessed it — spaces for writers. Whether writing is your lifeblood or you got stuck in Intro to Fiction, check out the best (and worst) places to practice your craft.
The Schwinn Continental is an awfully trustworthy model. Mine doesn’t have a serial number, which became extra cool last spring when Kurt, the We-Fix-Bikes guy, took that to mean that it was an industry prototype. It looks like a senior citizen in the bike rack outside the Brothers K Coffeehouse, surrounded as it is by mountain bikes and strollers. Its speckled red frame and gumshoe tires seem more to emblemize the wayward hipster crowd that Brothers K can’t quite harness than the accessory to a lifestyle as unabashedly European as it is business casual.
It also reveals two notable things about the coffeehouse on Hinman and Main.
- You will need a bike to get there.
- You will not bump into 47 friends there, like you will at Ambrosia. In fact, you may not bump into any at all.
It’s a nice place, and they’ve got a cute, convenient gimmick going with the literary reference: the owners, Jon and Brian Kim, are actually brothers. It’s simply not dazzling or unique or cozy enough to merit the bike ride for Northwestern students (or writers).
Maybe it’s the tile floors or the square tables that make you feel more like you’re at a restaurant than at a hangout. Whatever the reason, it’s just tough to get the creative juices flowing here. You’re constantly tempted to take advantage of the free Wi-Fi or to eavesdrop on conversations, descending upon you in waves–the hopelessly dim concerns of adulthood.
“So my kid’s social studies teacher thinks he’s a really neat kind of guy. Tells the kids to pick anything mentioned in ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ and write a little report about it. As if kids today are just going nuts over Billy Joel.”
The menu is fairly broad, if a tad overpriced. The tomato-bisque soup (an unfair sample) tastes more like pickle-bisque, but the sandwiches are exquisitely dressed and filling to boot. Addicts will be pleased to discover that the Brothers K features pastries from Bennison’s Bakery.
The coffee is from Chicago’s own Metropolis Coffee Company, and the Brothers know how to brew it, which is really all you can reasonably ask them to do. In-house refills are a buck, which seems like a great deal until about the fourth or fifth trip to the counter.
The sort of depressing thing about Brothers K is that it doesn’t seem to have quite figured out its identity as a business. They play Amy Winehouse on their MySpace page. They have a MySpace page. They’ve got open mics and poetry gatherings, and a free book exchange that lets you trade one of your own books for one of theirs. But the hipsters stopped listening to Winehouse over a year ago. Northwestern students are the stalwart denizens of Facebook, not MySpace. And the book exchange seems only to have acquired a healthy assortment of Peter Rabbit varietals, and the oeuvre of Brad Thor.
At the very least, it’s gratifying to know that you’re contributing to the survival of a local small business. The Kim brothers work there every day and are delightful hosts. It feels, for all the world, like they’re welcoming you into their home, happy to offer suggestions and even tell you that what you’ve ordered is, under the circumstances, ill-advised. It may not be perfect, and it’s certainly not right next door, but it’s a pleasant place to spend an afternoon enjoying coffee and a muffin; here and there jotting in your notebook; getting a glimpse of the world, as it were, beyond Davis Street’s insulating fringe.
Details
500 Main St.
Evanston, IL 60202
Hours
Monday-Saturday: 6:30 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. (9:00 p.m. in summer)
Sunday: 6:30 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. (8:00 p.m. in summer)
Grades
- Menu: B
- Coffee: A-
- Ambience: B
- Accessibility: D
- Overall: B