Last year, on a day much like today, the snow sifted to the ground like powdered sugar, the thin jacket, in hindsight, too thin, and the canned brisk air just unlatched and untucked from a night’s confinement, I stumbled, on my way to class, grumbling across the disrespected and disgruntled land bridge known as the “College Ghetto” when I noticed heat and noise emitting from the cellar of the defunct mid-town Telephone Company.
With my shoes soaked, my socks spongy, and my class, not important anymore, I stepped cautiously up the iced-over stoop, through a glass door and back down some steps into what could be easily described as a dungeon. But it was warmer and softer, and full of characters like myself discouraged by winter’s struggles, nay, Albany’s winter struggle. As merely a face in the crowd, I couldn’t help but smile at the newly grounded microcosmic organization founder mere blocks from my doorstep: The Hudson River Coffee House.