What if there was a bar where you could bring your laptop?

What if there was a bar where you could bring your laptop? What if you could bring it out and type on it, but you had to wear a dunce cap they fastened under your chin? What if nobody was allowed to wear AirPods, but you could wear wired earbuds or over-ear non-noise-cancelling headphones? What if there was a public place you could type on your computer really late at night? What if you could rent a word processor?

What if there was one enormous blackboard for everybody, and that was also where they kept track of your bar tab? What if there were five hundred candles? What if there was a huge circular table, and the whole middle of it was a punch bowl for everybody, and you could float little boats across carrying notes if you wanted to say something to somebody on the other side? What if there was a single velvet curtain that you could draw over yourselves and kiss behind?

What if you could twirl around in an adult-sized baby activity center (pictured) and consult your dashboards?

What if they had esports cafes but instead of esports it was the products made by the unicorn product companies unbundling Microsoft Office? What if they let dark academia into the library multipurpose room? What if there was an old factory converted into an underground electronic music venue but the whole thing was bathrooms, arranged in a maze where you’d look in the sweaty rattling mirrors and see your new-year-new-me soul? What if you zoned a situation room next to a field of wheat? What if you used the spatial affordances of augmented reality to design a calendar application that understood the true nature of time, while in actual spatial reality crouching in the loft of a barn? What if you carved a bullet journal into the bars of your cell?

What if there was a night market with fifty little clinics for different medical specialties? What if there was a Minute Clinic except they also had priests? What if you could cry or have great ideas in the airport lactation pods?

What if we all climbed into a hole together to play the sultriest game of Sardines? What if it had state-of-the-art ventilation and carbon monoxide monitors? What if we sat in the ice fishing hut and typed on our e-ink tablets with connected Bluetooth keyboards waiting for the trout to arrive? What if we dragged a windowless caboose we took turns in for introvert time behind the snowmobile?

All of this is dedicated to the period around 2010, an era when people thought thoughts like this. Gearless bicycles and moustaches, a Williamsburg before the Sephora, typewriters and dreamgirls, Ball jars and flower crowns, film cameras, suspenders, workwear, menswear, , they never found it, but they tried! No coincidence, I think, that the Thought Catalog, xoJane, and Medium confessionals burned their fierce tender flames for several years afterwards.