Chapter 4 – Scale Model

Colectivo Coffee – US Bank – 777 E. Wisconsin Ave, Milwaukee

I often meet people at Colectivo in the US Bank Building atrium for lunch—it's the tiniest version of Colectivo, but it has a big heart. Sometimes Mark, and sometimes Ken, occasionally Aunt Bet, Mr. Renshaw, even Cleo Marville, or Baron von Gletkin. Sometimes they will have a gluten-free lunch item, then later discontinue it, but recently I discovered this “Baja Breakfast Bowl,” which is eggs, rice, black beans, avocado, and salsa—almost a perfect lunch for working—satisfying without putting you in a coma—and I made the executive decision that it's Mexican inspired enough to include on this page—mostly because of the name, of course, which inspired me to later use my i-cigarette break to try to remember what “Baja” makes me think of, and... well, nothing... no band, even. Then I remembered the Baja Bug, a Sixties VW Beetle converted into an off-road dune-buggy, which I loved—but when pushing ten was already too large to fit behind the wheel in any of the (now collectable) scale versions I could afford on my meager allowance (which was more, adjusting for inflation, than I'm making now). Also interesting, I was looking at a map of the Baja Peninsula, which, never having been there, I was thinking I could walk down the coast of in like an afternoon. No! That thing is huge—it's like the length of California! I spend about half my time looking at maps, but I think most people don't look at maps at all, especially since the widespread use of GPS, and that's pretty tragic, because, well, maps don't tell you everything, but without geography, history is meaningless. Really, the most crucial concept for the human race is scale, and as we continue to hone our artificial sophistication we lose any sense of scale—ultimately disastrous, because scale is at the heart of both our glory and our folly, and losing sight of it is essential to the end of us as a species. The larger the sprig of cilantro they put in this bowl the better, of course—it's not just a visual garnish—but it's the avocado that puts this hybrid breakfast/lunch on the map.