Fran Gardner

I just found an old draft I had never published. Maybe you have a favorite place not mentioned here.

The New York Time published a swell piece Dec. 3, 2010, about Laptopistan, the strange culture of the coffeehouse as office. The writer initially scoffs at the idea before realizing why people go to work on coffeehouse tables; it makes them focus, free of the distractions of web surfing and gaming.

I totally buy into that: you can get a lot of work done, focus in, drill down—if you hit the coffeehouse sweet spot.

Ah, the sweet spot! Premium coffeehouse gestalt. When it works, coffeehouse heaven. Work sings, juices flow, metaphors collide. When it doesn’t, well, coffeehouse hell.

One recent week,  I really, really needed a nice coffee shop with decent coffee, noninvasive music and some cozy semisolitude. What I got were icy drafts from leaky doors and windows, and loud Christmas music, including two renditions of “The Little Drummer Boy” (my least favorite holiday song) within 15 minutes.

I have a longstanding dream of opening a coffee house  on my terms: no music (want noise? start a conversation or bring your iPod), kindly baristas, table service, good food (cupcakes and healthier offerings), plenty of electrical outlets, warm in the winter, not too chilly in summer…a place for anyone who wants to get some work done.

Nice dream, bad business model.

Some recent detours into the dark side of Laptopistan (not mentioning negative names, but you know which ones they are):

• Bad coffee: bitter, over-brewed
• Bad lattes (you have to start with decent coffee). For years I thought I didn’t like lattes because I had such a bad one at a Starbucks. But there’s been a sea change; now one can get a decent latte at Starbucks. And the stores are usually good places to work, if crowded. Anti-Starbucks snobs: get over it.
• Invasive music (everywhere!)
• Uncomfortable and/or cramped seating, small tables, no place to spread out papers
• Uninteresting food: please, more than bagels and muffins
• Unpleasant or uncaring staff: It took several visits, but a couple of  establishments on Hawthorne that serve decent coffee finally frosted me out.
• Accessibility issues (stairs). I try to be accommodating. I can lift the walker up a few steps or carry the laptop in a backpack while using canes. The scooter, however, has to stay outside.

Here are some Eastside places I like.

• Red & Black on SE 11th: Kombucha on tap, dragon noodles, sometimes vegan cupcakes…nearly always a good place to work.
• Marino’s on Division: Wonderful people, including the owner, Dario, and assorted musicians who wander in, play a few pieces, have a cuppa and drift away. The food  s good and varied. Cappuccinos are actually breves—as advertised, the best in town.
• Floyd’s on Morrison: If you can get a good seat on a quiet day, a great place to write.
• Seven Virtues on NE Glisan: Stark white wood like Floyd’s adds to a similarly chilly atmosphere, but great for a long haul of working. Try the soup.
• TaborSpace on Belmont: A church’s huge common room with stained glass, big tables, lots of outlets, and the bakery goods are refreshingly small—no horrid megamuffins. It’s a true neighborhood gathering place, so sometimes the conversations or kids’ loud play can be distracting.
• Bipartisan Cafe on Morrison: Too crowded most days, but they have pie!
• Utopia on Stark: Quiet, pleasant, limited menu, I can scooter there.
• Bare Bones on Belmont: good food, great happy hour, big old step plus a screen door, but I  can make it. Scooter stays outside.
• And Starbucks, now that they have free wifi and Pike Place blend. Great bathrooms! I miss the one at SE 20th and Hawthorne, one of those closed when the chain retrenched a few years ago. The best thing about the one in the new Safeway at 27th and Hawthorne is that you can buy food from elsewhere in the store, and you can’t tip the baristas even if you want to, because they  work for Safeway, not Starbucks.

Working at home, especially in the morning before Bob is up and about, can be efficient, cheaper—certainly quieter. But sometimes, I just want a cup of someone else’s cappuccino—and maybe a tiny goodie, like a single Starbucks miniscone.

Time for a trip to Laptopistan.

I came across Famous People with Multiple Sclerosis somehow (who can remember how one comes upon these places?). I’m not sure if it’s a validation of my cluelessness about celebrity, but most of the “famous” seem pretty obscure.

Here’s a chunk of the “D” names:

• Bruno Tassan Din – Italian publisher
• Wayne Dobson – magician
• Deborah Downey – Cabaret Performer
• Khiawatha Downey – American Footballer
• Jacqueline du Pre – cellist

OK, I know the last one. I saw her play at Berkeley in 1970, in the last year of her career. Who are those others?

A few names on the list were a surprise: Terri Garr, Lena Horne, Joan Didion.

And then there was St. Lydwina or Lidwina of Schieden (1380-1433), a Dutchwoman who is patron of ice skaters. She fell and was disabled while skating at age 15, but with prayer, she recovered. The rest of her life, she would have periods of paralysis that miraculously lifted, again with prayer. To modern ears, that sounds a lot like relapsing-remitting MS.

I learned about St. Lydwina in a speech at an MS Society meeting by a visiting neurologist. I’d give you a link to more info about her, but aside from Wikipedia, which may not be accurate, and the Catholic Encyclopedia, for whom it’s all miracles all the time, the sites all seem to be in Dutch.

The big news in MS treatment is Gilenya, a disease-modifying drug that is taken by mouth instead of injected or infused. It’s  supposed to be more about 50 percent more effective at slowing the progress of the disease.

Plus, it may be effective for treating my primary progressive MS (PPMS), for which there is no current treatment.

It costs $48,000 a year, about a third more than the other disease-modifying drugs, which are injected or infused.

The breathtaking thing is: Fingolimod (FTY720), the active component in Gilenya, can be had wholesale (for research purposes) at $42 for 50 mg. The daily dosage of Gilenya, the brand name for fingolimod, is 0.5 mg. That’s 42 cents for a dose of fingolimod. The cost of a dose of Gilenya is $133.

Fingolimod is cheap because it’s derived from a fungus, Iscaria sinclarii, that’s been used for centuries in Chinese medicine. No bioengineering involved. I haven’t found a description of how it’s actually made, but it’s probably as easy as extracting salicylic acid from willow bark to make aspirin.

More effort and expense go into manufacturing drugs like Avonex and Betaseron, which are beta interferon, made with recombinant DNA technology involving the harvesting of rodent organs. Tysabri (natalizumab) is a monoclonal antibody. Copaxone (glatiramer acetate) is a combination of four synthetically made amino acids.

And then there’s Gilenya. $48,000  a year for a drug that costs maybe $1,500 to manufacture.

Nobody seems to care about the cost issue. Drug price control is a nonstarter with Congress. Most MS patients have health insurance, and to keep them happy, Novartis, the maker of Gilenya, is committed to picking up the cost of copay to the tune of $800 a month for patients using the drug. That would cover the common copay of 20 percent of the $4,000 monthly cost of the drug. So for the consumer, the drug costs next to nothing.

That’s breathtaking cupidity with a side of business acumen. Quite the corporate model.