Johnny, I know the feeling! There was this little coffee shop place called Nighthawks that shut down 3 or so weeks ago. It didn't fit into the generic model of every cafe ever though. The interior was bare, stripped back, and terribly ugly. There wasn't really a ceiling, just the I-beams and the roof. The walls were painted a bright, cheap-warehouse yellow. The floor was a nice, smooth cement. Second hand couches were the norm. The owner always said it followed some post-modern architecture/interior design fad of the early 90's, but I think that was just a convenient excuse for being a hole in the wall.
But it wasn't only different in its decorations. The place was called Nighthawks for a reason--namely, it was only really open after 9 PM, and stayed open until Bryan, the owner, wanted to go to sleep. This usually averaged to about 3 am. There was a very small group of people that were pretty much always there. Occasionally you'd get a couple of new people, but on the large scale, it was this little community. I wrote an entire script there, a script I had performed several months later. I played my first show to a group of four people loafing on couches. Right after I broke up with my last girlfriend, I went there, and sullen, disgruntled, confused, and severly angry, I played the best game of Spades I had ever played. We talked about books and presidents. We sat outside on the curb, listening to the Chronic, chain smoking, and avoiding the owner's mother who was inside the building. I could go on and on--the place was very important to me, and at times, I spent more time there than I did at home.
It was shut down a few weeks ago, and for something completely asinine. I mentioned how there wasn't really a ceiling. Well, there wasn't any insulation at all either, and so Bryan had the landlord send someone in to fix this. Unfortunately, the landlord was kind of a cheap bastard and hired bottom line workers, and so the job was done completely wrong. The landlord said he would fix it, but this time at Bryan's expense. It would cost some 1500 dollars. As it was, the place was hardly making enough money to pay for the rent, let alone throw a spare 1500 dollars at something the landlord should have fixed last time.
Goodnight, nighthawks.