{"id":221090,"date":"2025-09-12T14:36:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T14:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/221090\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T14:36:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T14:36:23","slug":"i-miss-new-york-the-gift-of-diner-coffee-kitsch-brings-me-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/221090\/","title":{"rendered":"I Miss New York. The Gift of Diner Coffee Kitsch Brings Me Back."},"content":{"rendered":"

\nI arrived in LA six months before the pandemic, though I had no idea, of course. Somehow I immediately felt a sense of doom, but I don\u2019t think I can chalk that up to premonition as much as good old-fashioned anxiety. There were perils here I had not anticipated, including earthquakes, freeways, and alarmingly bold, svelte squirrels who were nothing like the plush and undulating critters that had populated my childhood like a fairytale.<\/p>\n

Long story short, I was instantly homesick. When lockdown arrived, I ached for even the worst parts of New York: the trash smells and the stuttering thud of subway doors being wrenched apart, the air conditioners dripping on my head in summer. The detritus that makes a place even more, sometimes, than the favorite bar or the park or that longed-for walkability that every New York transplant laments when they arrive in LA and attempts to take what seems to be a totally doable stroll on Google Maps.<\/p>\n

Around this time, I came across the New York Coffee Cup<\/a> in a Wirecutter gift guide<\/a> and bought it impulsively, for no other reason than that it felt urgent to surround myself with reminders that I had once lived in such a place.<\/p>\n

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The cup, with its sunny \u201cWe Are Happy to Serve You\u201d scrawl and Greek meander border, is a ceramic stand-in for the iconic, disposable 1963 Anthora takeout coffee cup, which was designed by Leslie Buck<\/a>, a Holocaust survivor, and sold by the MoMA Design Store<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Years earlier, I\u2019d worked on the same block as MoMA for a company that offered free access to the museum. On my lunch break, I used to take 30 minutes and go to the Matisse room, like I was visiting friends. Gazing at my screen, I remembered, with a pang, the scalding coffee spill on my hand from the cart on the street outside \u2014 another commonplace New York rudeness I somehow missed. I added the ceramic version to my cart.<\/p>\n

The cup is not all nostalgia; it is fully functional and dishwasher- and microwave-safe. In my case, for several years the cup has provided a place to rest my Kalita Wave coffee dripper<\/a> for my morning pour-over, a bit of coffee kitsch that brings me a bit of joy on even the most fog-headed morning. At lunch, when I make a cup of tea, I rest my tea strainer there. You could also use the cup for your toothbrush, or to sip from, or as a catchall.<\/p>\n

\"A The joy of tchotchkes is fitting them, improbably, into your daily life. I use this cup as a resting place for my coffee and tea strainers. Katie Okamoto\/NYT Wirecutter<\/p>\n

As for drinking, the 10-ounce size isn\u2019t especially functional for most coffee addicts, though it would hold a cortado or a nice cup of sencha. While attractive, the matte glaze doesn\u2019t feel especially friendly in hand, and it\u2019s prone to staining. The cup\u2019s proportions are a bit chunkier than the paper version, if you are a true stickler.<\/p>\n

But the little blue, white, and gold cup, complete with rolled top lip and lapped seam on its side, looks so much like the real thing on my countertop by my coffee setup, where it lives permanently. I adore it and have found the perfect job for it, which is part of the delight and gift of a tchotchke: You fit it improbably into your home, making it yours.<\/p>\n

\"Side While a bit thicker than the disposable to-go cup it\u2019s based on, the ceramic cup includes thoughtful details reminiscent of the original, like a lapped edge and rolled lip. Katie Okamoto\/NYT Wirecutter<\/p>\n

It makes sense to me, in retrospect, that I was so keen to grasp in my hands a permanent version of an ephemeral daily artifact that, even in New York, is swiftly becoming a relic. Foolishly, I was hell-bent on preserving all the elusive evidence of living in a place I no longer lived.<\/p>\n

More than six years later, my homesickness has mostly passed. I have evolved and hardly blink when an earthquake hits. But I still have the little ceramic \u201cto-go\u201d cup and use it daily. It is a small, silly thing, and it\u2019s as clich\u00e9 as the NYC-to-LA move, but it makes me happy.<\/p>\n

I recommend this as a gift to anyone who has recently left New York (or New Jersey, my home state, where Greek diners reign) \u2014 especially if you\u2019re trying to convince that someone to move back as soon as possible. To my friends and family on the East Coast, I am sorry that I have not done that quite yet. California, it turns out, has been good to me.<\/p>\n

This article was edited by Catherine Kast and Maxine Builder.<\/p>\n

Further reading<\/p>\n