God Bless the Donut Pub

donut pubSpend ten minutes around me, and you will learn that I am not a man who wants any part of rural life. I grew up in suburban New Jersey, and I’ve pretty much had my fill of car culture and hanging out at the mall on weekends.  I conform to, have even cultivated, the worst Woody Allenish clichés about New York City existence. I have to be coaxed into leaving the island of Manhattan, and get fidgety when I do. When confronted with greenery, I start to sneeze. I was once caused to go camping, by a long-ago girlfriend, and spent the entire four days sitting around glumly waiting for it to end. (Mostly because it rained the entire time. I took that as a hint from Mother Nature.) Unlike Nate, who is pleasingly and sanely conflicted on these matters, I am a provincial, parochial, ridiculous chauvinist. I will do everything I can to live the rest of my life on this particular hunk of schist. Frank O’Hara put it nicely: “I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.” Solidarity, daddy-o. I’m even lucky enough to have married a city girl who more or less agrees with me.

And yet, as I trudged twenty blocks downtown to daycare in the rain this morning, for the second day in a row… pushing a baby in a stroller covered with one of those horrible oxygen-tent rain guards … holding a cheapo umbrella that blew out several times and lost most of its structural integrity halfway through the trip … I had a moment. It involved, just for a second, a big minivan with a sliding door and a carseat, and a commute that involved nothing wet except a travel mug of coffee. Just for a moment, I had a vision of my alternate life, and it seemed ever so much easier.

Fortunately, I have recourse at moments like this. It involves a stop at a place called the Donut Pub–a local institution that’s been on 14th Street since 1964. It has a spotless marble countertop, swiveling diner-style stools, and old Greek guys dispensing crullers. The donuts are several orders of magnitude better than Dunkin’; the coffee is as hot as fresh lava; and they’ll let you read the paper at the counter for as long as you want while your soaking-wet pants drip dry. On a morning when you’re feeling a little fragile, it takes the sting right out of everyday life.

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About Christopher

Christopher Bonanos is a senior editor at New York magazine, where he works on arts and urban-affairs coverage (and a few other things). He and his wife live smack in the middle of midtown Manhattan, where their son was born in March 2009. Both parents are very happy, and very tired.

2 thoughts on “God Bless the Donut Pub

  1. Pingback: Dirty War and Broken Families | DADWAGON

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