Babka Bakery Cafe & Shag

Jo, J and I took a little trip to Brunswick St. today in our lunch break. It was mainly to visit J’s news agency, deliver some food and walk off the onerous lunch I had somehow managed to fit inside of me.

Shops of note:

Shag
I love shops arranged like these; merchandise everywhere, hangars chock-full of clothes, shoes on the floor, bird cages hanging with scarves, hats on hats on hats on stands. Messy, busy and not cold and clinical with glaring lights and awful music. On the other hand, I would never bring myself to wear much of its merchandise because, I’m afraid, I’m not that sort of: “Oh~ VINTAGE!” person. And (in my humble, humble opinion) most of it looks ridiculous unless you live in that yuppie/artsy area.

I also found a place where they sell those disgusting Chairman Mao bags toted around on some whim by Cameron Diaz.

Why do people buy these when they’ve no idea what’s written on them? It’s like that East Asian character trend sino-friendly boys seem to like: hoodies with ’snow’ or ‘cotton’ on the back, or – even worse – a line of meaningless words. When you ask them what it means, they give you a glassy, blank-eyed stare: “Oh, but it was cool.” And ‘vintage.’ I swear, if I hear that word again…

Jo was unhappy that we’d left our place of relative comfort to go for a 4-block walk. Whining and whingeing all the way, we finally came to a compromise: pastries and free magazines.

Babka
Babka’s is so cute and quaint and small and warm and comfortable inside. No prams [thank goodness - these yuppie women have no idea what sort of space their gargantuan-sized baby pushers are filling up] because Babka is only small. That door sign was so adorable.

I didn’t get anything because the day I was born, my sweet tooth eloped to Canada with my sense of humour and so to this day I have no craving for chocolate, sweets, pastries or any other sugar-based edibles.

The serving staff are all female and the line of people waiting for their Cafe orders was pretty big – but then the place was pretty cramped. It smelled really nice inside and Jo came out with a pear/apple danish; we couldn’t determine and Jo had forgotten. It was eaten with unnerving relish and all complaints about having to move disappeared into thin air.