A Good Ritual
No Ordinary Habit
The closest I get to a gym is visiting El Condor, the wonderful coffee shop next to the West Village Equinox. They have a great Ethiopian roast (medium body, faintly acidic, if you care about these things). Suddenly they closed and I was in a dark, decaffeinated place. I sent them a desperate message on Instagram and one of the owners, Nicolas, agreed to meet in front of Three Lives and we could transact: cash for coffee.
This arrangement struck me as delightful and very neighborly, a rare equation in New York. When I got home I realized that these were whole beans—they had always been ground before. Now I had never ground my own coffee. This seemed like an unnecessary added layer of morning complication. But I was in no position to argue. I got a small German grinder and things were fine, enjoyable in fact. Then I got a better American grinder and now I’m a grinding fool and love the whole crazy process. I can’t imagine going back to the old way. It’s not that I think the coffee tastes better; I just like the process.
Everybody draws the line somewhere and the Japanese draw the line far out, because they want to make things the best way and don’t care how long it takes. Other people just want their coffee fast. Similarly, some men shave with an electric razor. Others use a blade and even a brush. Better yet they go to a barber and get a proper shave with a hot towel.
Rituals come and go—do you still get the newspaper every morning? Most people roll over and look at their phone. That’s less a ritual and more of a habit. So we head out to buy the Weekend FT and the Sunday Times from our favorite newsstand. Now that feels like a ritual again.
How do you start a ritual? Do something twice and make it nice. My dad makes a cheese soufflé on Christmas Eve (he wears velvet slippers while he does it). I’m not sure how that started but now it’s part of the holiday. I wear a large straw hat when I do a big grill at our cabin. This invokes gaucho expertise I don’t have. But now it’s my grilling hat and when I put it on I know I’m going to be standing in front of a fire for five hours. Good times!
I have a weakness for annual rituals, like the watching Masters (while drinking Riesling) and for seasonal fishing trips (England mayfly hatch). But simple rituals are good too. The New Yorker used to come to my old apartment every Monday. I would walk over to the Rusty Knot (RIP) and sit at the front booth and text everybody I wanted to see and read the magazine until they showed up. Now that’s a ritual (though a young man’s ritual, to be sure).