Columbus, Ohio USA
Return to Homepage www.shortnorth.com

What the Hell Am I Doing Here?
Mango's Cafe
By Allex Spires
email zero.oskul@yahoo.com
September/October 2012 Issue

Return to Homepage

Return to Spirespage

Thursday, the First Day of August in the Hundred-Score-and-Dozenth Year since B.C.(E.)

It’s three pee’em, two days before Gallery Hop. Mango’s Café, at 21 Smith Street, features a small parking lot full of cinder block and bags of mason mix, and unpainted parking spaces. The cinder blocks are organized in a way to look like planters and each has a droopy, fake, and unrealistic palm tree sticking out of it. The building is definitely handicap accessible.

Through untinted windows, I see a fresco of two palm trees flanking a hookah. Actual hookahs sit inside, on a well that is made of garden masonry. I have long been told that hookahs, smoked with burning charcoals, somehow remove carcinogens from tobacco smoke. Modern science, however, shows that a single head of hookah gives as much carcinogen value as a pack of cigarettes… but so does eating a stalk of burnt celery.

Located at the dilapidated end of the Short North, it seems Mango’s is unaware of their potential at all. I write this sitting in the hot sun on an unfinished cinder block planter. Some college kids walk by, and I read them my draft. They look at the building as I read, and all agree: Something about the place is just not right.

© 2012 - 2013 Short North Gazette, Columbus, Ohio. All rights reserved.

Return to Homepage www.shortnorth.com