Sunday Coffee II - More balance

Social Space Café has more than just its coffee to recommend it.  The coffee is good Sunday morning coffee, and the croissant was flakey on the outside soft on the inside and buttery.  The table outdoors was in the shade with a view of the garden, and it is not their fault that the Ophir Road on the other side of the garden is being redeveloped so that for half the time I was there the soundscape was 'concrete cutting' - quite literally concrete being cut.

One of the other businesses in the same galleria of shops happens to be a gym (with an internationally recognized name shared once upon a time with record stores, and these days with an airline, and digital media/communications).  Said gym was pumping out a noise possibly intended to be motivational but which, given that the volume even where I and other café users sat verged on 'conversation damper', must have needed a health warning inside the gym itself.

Fortunately the gym and the concrete cutting had coordinated their impact on the environment and stopped more or less simultaneously, at which point I ordered a second coffee and enjoyed the air-freshened feel of an electrical storm, the breeze that presages rain, and then the rain itself - glazing all the greenery and lowering the air temperature for a while.

So what does the Social Space offer apart from coffee?  They are trying to promote more sustainable living.  They are selling 'no plastic' items to replace the every day plastic - like straws, cups, bags, a big bank of refillables - like dishes detergent, laundry detergent, fabric softener, shampoo, hand-cream....  They also display and sell hand-crafted items from a few small local 'makers' and change their offerings every couple of weeks.  It provides a showcase for local creativity.  

There is a big rack on the wall where you can donate paper bags with handles that you might have been given at other branded places, so that others can take and use them if they have need of one.  Help yourself paper bag exchange!  (I guess it is all part of changing the mind set.) 

They have space people can rent for meetings, workshops, art classes etc, 

And they employ people with 'diverse' characteristics that might set those folk at odds with mainstream employment expectations. (I have a niece in that category and have only praise for those who can see past her differences and value her as a person and an employee.)

Go Social Space Café.