Stringers Stores
Stringers Stores
2-8 Ocean Beach Rd
Sorrento
Ambience: constituents. People who know their job. Timing. Friendliness. Music – or lack of it. Physical layout. Fellow imbibers. Views – exterior, interior. I’ve made three visits to this establishment and each time it’s been good.
I’m sitting alone at the bench facing the sea, regarding its pale blue surface through a fringe of Norfolk pines and musing upon Terry Eagleton’s words on Samuel Beckett. “… many of the features of his later prose and plays arise directly from his experience of radical uncertainty, disorientation, exile, hunger and need … What we see in his work is not some timeless condition humaine, but war-torn 20th century Europe. It is, as Adorno recognised, an art after Auschwitz, one which keeps faith in its austere minimalism and unremitting bleakness with silence, terror and non-being. His writing is as thin as is compatible with being barely perceptible … words flicker up for a fragile moment from a void into which they then fade back.”
High ceiling, cream decor. Good Mocapan coffee. Tart, fruit-cake, friands, cookies. Slices of tart and fruit-cake are a very reasonable $3. The caf is predominately a wine shop and I like the table arrangements – one abuts the end of a wine-rack, another sits in a nook, and a bench faces a stack of bottles of olive oil and jars of olives. There are chairs and tables outside on the pavement, and also a secretive little paved enclosure at the back. A quiet, relaxed yet attentive vibe comes through to me.
It’s January 30, 2007. Teachers are back at their posts, readying themselves for tomorrow’s invasion. Retired folk wander the street and peer into shop windows. Too many cars occupy parking lots.
A walk-down cellar holds older and more expensive wines. A visit here, well outside of the January holiday madness is recommended. Open every day.
30 January 07 by John Martin