Welcome Back, Purple Onion

The Purple Onion coffee shop, former home of many a recluse and midnight mathematician, is back online at their new location on 14th and University. I'd like to welcome them back with open arms. The new place looks quite a bit more spiffy than their former arrangement--which in truth was a few years overdue for incineration. We didn't call it the "Grungy Bunion" for nothing. I look forward to seeing the old crowd there on weekends and evenings--Joe with his Loeb editions, Baraki and his underappreciated poetic fervor, and various other displaced forces in the Dinkytown culture. You know who you are, O venerable fixtures of style and grit.

A cafe like the Purple Onion glues a community together in a way no Potbelly's could ever hope to do. Other places, like the Starlight and Espresso Royale did their best to catch the overflow, but the last days of the old Onion really were a high water mark in the culture of Dinkytown. Hopefully the new location will foster a fresh spin on the old haunt, that grizzled battleship, elder matron of dressed-down haute couture.