Back in February, months before we picked up our Noovo Plus, I was thinking through all of the ways that we might use our upcoming van, and I wrote a post on it entitled Mode Noovo. There are different modes I imagined for the van. Vacation and travel mode, of course, but also a driveway hangout spot mode, even a guest room mode.
One of the most important of these modes, and the one that sets the Noovo Plus apart from almost every other van, is (as I called it) Coffee Shop/Office mode. This mode is important. Though we intended to travel extensively, we are also realists and wanted to have an answer to this question: How are we going to use this van during non-travel periods?
When I was a young photographer, I spent my time on my feet making photographs, on my feet processing negatives, on my feet in the darkroom printing images, and on my feet afterward dry-mounting them. Today I find myself sitting and sitting and sitting at a glowing miracle screen that does so many good things for me while it simultaneously does so many bad things to me.
The coffee shop was a good solution to getting work done. Get out of the house. Get out amongst people, at least in the abstract “there are people around me” way. I used to get a ton of work done at the local coffee shop.
And then things changed. More and more people are not only zombified on their phones, even when sitting with others, but they are talking to their screens, talking out loud at full volume to people (or AI agents) that only they can see and hear. The other day I had one person on my left (an attorney) going on and on to someone about a $7 bill she wanted corrected (this took multiple phone calls, long and loud), while on my right yet another tech bro babbling their secret-code management consulting language, talking about nearly nothing despite the enormous number of words used. And to his right, another one, another yapper generously sharing their trivial conversation with us all.
These loud video calls used to be rare here, manifesting once or twice a year when storms knocked out power to the area, forcing the invisible hybrid workforce out of their pajamas and into the common world. But now it’s every day, the tables near electric outlets perpetually covered with laptops, the seats filled with self-immersed earbud wearers who never make eye contact.
Good god, do I want to become one of them? Good god, am I already one of them?
I’m lucky to live in a beautiful, coastal area. With my Noovo Plus, with its comfortable lounge area, I can take advantage of that on any day I close. Less than a mile from that same coffee shop I can open the back doors of the van and set about my day, enjoying the ocean and the breeze and people-watching, if I like, all the while enjoying the comfort of a large, solid table on which to work. Want a snack? The fridge and pantry are right there. Need a break? Take a walk on the beach. Running out of steam? A fifteen-minute nap, right then and there, will do you good.
Instead of having to wear your own headphones, simply to cancel out the clueless and the rude and the self-absorbed, you listen to the surf, to the seagulls, gaze thoughtfully at the ocean swells and the drifting clouds. If you have to sit, this is the way to sit.
[Yes, this post is a little bit grumpy-I know!. When writing this, we were back at the coffee shop due to the cold weather (during summer here in Montara, a typical day can be a high of 58 degrees and a chill wind blowing in off the ocean) and, yet again, I was surrounded by screen-talkers. Ugh.]