Sunday, 30th September 2007
Given that the last couple of entries have made me sound like a dim-witted cross between David Lodge and Melvyn Bragg, a disclaimer in the title doesn’t seem like a bad idea – in fact, I wondered if in fact it wasn’t time to revisit the whole idea of Cafe Vagina.
Cafe Vagina is a business proposition devised by Best Friend and me, spurred on one day by a cafe sign that was so (unitentionally) genitally suggestive: a bisected, inverted triangle, topped with coils of black scribbles, that it was forever after dubbed “Cafe Vagina”.
Cafe Vagina became the alternative to the hideous time we were having at former agency, asked to do everyone’s work, motivate a shrinking department with more work and less money and make up for the shortcomings of everyone else that we worked with. She did a far better, more graceful job of it than me, but whenever we needed to manufacture a bit of distance between ourselves and the gulf of unhappy compromise and indolence in the Agency, we would remind ourselves: “There’s always Cafe Vagina”.
At Cafe Vagina, we would offer the customer the first wholly, subtly vagina-themed coffee experience in London. Nothing explicit or pornographic would be admitted: in fact, the whole joy of it would be providing consumers with something that was unsettling and stimulating and needling: a question of “Is that sandwich’s arrangement on the plate INTENDED to make it look like a gynaecological illustration, or is that just me?” rather than pictures of clitorises on the wall. Since the new, better jobs in new, better agencies, Cafe Vagina has gone somewhat by the board. But it’s nice to know that it’s there: and that we have already patented the idea at the British Library.
