By Catherine Franks
It's that point in the year where we seem to spend equal time looking back and looking forwards. I recently found myself scrolling pictures from over the years that Steampunk has been here doing our thing, finding the Kinks song 'Picture Book' running through my head. We recently celebrated the anniversary of the longest serving member of our team, Scotty, who joined us when he was 19 a full decade ago. This led me to search back through the photos on my phone, to excavate some old pictures of Scotty, like a parent looking for the embarrassing baby pics to show the new girlfriend.
As time rolled back I was struck by how many smiling faces, how many people looked back at me from my phone. In the thousands and thousands of photos (my iclouds have their own iclouds) are not only the coffees but the people and the dogs and the music events and the food trucks that have passed through Steampunk, becoming a part of us for a while.
Alongside our long serving team members, hundreds of other folk have served thousands of coffees here over the years - often starting with us as teenagers and finally leaving after years of weekend and holiday shifts. I hope their time in hospitality has left them with an understanding of the service economy and an appreciation for the work we do and the value we add to our communities. I wish everyone had the opportunity to work this side of a coffe bar for a while, like a national service, not only for the varied skills that you learn but also for the perspective it offers on our society and how we interact with each other.
I think about the idea of ‘third spaces’ quite a lot and it really influences the shape of Steampunk and what we try to do. Common spaces are becoming fewer as traditional gathering places like churches and clubs see their numbers fall; as formerly public spaces become privatised and cordoned off; as we get increasingly hived off into our homes, our rooms, locked behind our screens. Through those screens we are given an illusion of connection, a way of finding other ‘like minded’ folk. Don’t get me wrong, this can be a lifeline for some and a fun source of new information, hobbies and interests for others. But the flip side, I’ve found, in the addictive scrolling - just one more funny puppy reel - of social media is the separation it causes. My own experience is to feel cut off, like a spectator of life. I often feel like I’m watching others living their best lives and that mine is perpetually somehow less full, my achievements are a pale shadow of theirs, that what we do here in our little indie business is so much less than what everyone else is achieving. In my brain, I know that is not true, that we all show our best sides, our best days on social media. It is all frothy, magnified and covered in theatrical make up. My feed (where its not puppy reels) seems to be full of cinematically shot films from companies that are so much more aesthetic, so much cooler, know so much more that it seems possible and by extension must be ever so much more successful.
My phone photos are an antidote to my social media feed, they are a catalogue of all the moments, of small successes and yes also failures. They also catalogue the mundane - the breakfast with homegrown kale, the screenshot of train times, the accidental video of my feet. As I scrolled through them I remembered all the times that we shared at Steampunk over the years. Remember our Christmas Fair in 2014 the year we opened up the warehouse? It felt like all of North Berwick suddenly appeared upstairs in the mulled cider queue. Rachel Seago (also with us back then) had designed beautiful jar labels and we sold our cashew nut butter and home made brown sauce. Remember the long table chilli nights we did? Or the Speakeasy?
Remember the Squeeze the Funk out of February party that we had on 29 Feb 2020 right before the whole world closed down? Remember too, the fear as we slid our door closed at the start of the pandemic, not knowing when or if it would reopen? As I scrolled on there were the sunrise dog walks and the home baking recipe pics I shared during lockdown; the behind the scenes shots from the podcasts we recorded with our team; our masked faces serving coffees from a hatch. These were all interspersed with family pictures, my kids childish smiles morphing into their adult faces between pictures of pizza nights and food trucks and music events. My life and Steampunk’s are completely intertwined, that is what it is to run a small business. It is not only about me of course, but it is unmistakably a part of me, like a limb. If it were not here, a part of me would be gone too.
For the past couple of years Orange Moon popped up in Steampunk and brought the DJ gigs and record store days we shared with Becca and her dad. Having a record shop upstairs changed us in wonderfully unexpected ways and our space took on a whole new dimension because of it. As much as cafes are viewed as a third space, and despite us hosting many free events and community gatherings, the very idea of coming into a cafe does generally involve some kind of financial transaction. A record store doesn’t have that. You can come in with the sole intention of having a browse, a chat, a rummage through some crates. You can come in just because you love a thing and want to talk to other people who also love that thing. That is pure gold dust.
This kind of connection, the chance to socialise with no cost and no strings attached has become so rare and is therefore so much more precious. In our world we are told value is decided by men moving money around in markets on their computer screens. That is what determines what you pay for your cup of coffee, not the labour in the making of it. We are sold overpriced ‘luxury goods’ which we are told will give our lives purpose. An alien who landed on earth now would be forgiven for thinking that our sole purpose as humans is consumption, apparently this is the only thing that keeps our all important economy functioning. Without our economy where would we be? And if ‘we consume therefore we are’ is the mantra of our times, then what does the corollary mean? If I don’t consume I don’t exist? Sorry for the late stage capitalism rehash, none of these thoughts are new, but the ever present pressure to consume feels almost physical, a cutting off of air. So finding a rare pocket of freedom, an air bubble, like a record store where you can come and look and talk and walk away without buying anything (and that is perfectly socially acceptable) is such a precious thing. Our lives will be poorer when Orange Moon closes at the end of this year.
As baristas, I think often about the connections we make with people across our coffee bar. We see some of the same folk every day, others maybe intermittently but they are nevertheless woven through our lives. Conversations are picked up where they were left off, favourite drinks remembered, dog’s names etched into memory. We have lost some very special people this year and we think back fondly to their visits, the chats we shared over coffee, the fussing over their dogs. Whether they have passed away or moved far away they remain in our hearts. People regularly come in to tell us when they lose their beloved pet too and we often share a cry, having gotten to know them and understanding the part of their person’s heart that they have taken with them. Their person comes in for some time afterward looking incomplete and lost. I hope we offer them comfort as well as coffee.
Although we are so familiar to each other over the coffee bar - you recognise us on the street, wave hello. We know how you like your coffee, your hot chocolate. There is also a distance. You are sometimes a part of our life and then suddenly you are not and we don’t always know why. But please know that we notice your absence and you are missed. We hope that you notice our presence and that the space we offer - whether it is a third space or a common one - offers you some comfort and a salve of connection in these disconnected times. Maybe at some point in the far future you will find us in the backdrop of your picture book photos, playing bit parts in the stories of your lives.