So yesterday I went to Olympia. I lived there from ages 18-21, and it was fairly life-altering, as those ages inevitably are. I ran into several people I knew back then, and happily they all recognized me, though I look pretty different now. The whole visit made me happy.

Except perhaps for the part where I went to the place where the Smithfield Cafe used to be. It’s now a Thai restaurant. The Smithfield was “our” place, the coffee house where all the punk kids would go every. single. day. It was basically our clubhouse, our homebase.

So I went directly there as soon as we got into town, almost as though a magnet was pulling me. And I knew years ago that it had closed down. But I had to go anyway. I just stood in front of it for awhile. I peered in the windows, everything inside is different, I guess all that remains is the shape of the room and the windows, and remnants of seafoam green paint on the outside. I sat there on a metal chair out front, which was supposed to be a wooden bench, and gazed across the street at a view of the buildings across Fourth I had seen a million times before.

And I started crying. The kind of crying that feels good somehow.