As a casual infrequenter of the East Side coffee shop, Node, I'm sad to see it closing it's doors, but I'm also not too surprised.

I didn't discover Node until my senior year in college when the gritty, club-house coffee shop was barely a year old, but it already felt like such a Milwaukee institution that I assumed it had been around for awhile.

It was an unusual place with more unusual patrons. Street punks, yarn-haired goths, or intellectual book worms; it was a hole-in-the-wall haven for Milwaukee's sub-cultures. It was a place that you could go to feel better about yourself, where you could be happy that you weren't this person, but be happy that you could fit in with this person.

For a few months I lived in Iowa and after a spur of the moment six hour trip back to Milwaukee with a friend of mine, one of the first places we stopped was Node, as a sort of reminder of what really drives Milwaukee. My brother visited from Lincoln, Nebraska and was excited that a place existed where anybody could go and be able to meet somebody new and interesting. I lamented that "Yeah, but most of the people are kinda lame," but he shot back that he was excited that THE POSSIBILITY of this kind of interaction was available.

It was a place for guys to wear dresses, high schoolers to try smoking and freaks to meet freakiers. The cable-less could catch Adult Swim (did the television ever leave that station?), insomniacs could put off the inevitable (sleep or help...take your pick) and suburbanites could walk the darker side.

Oh yeah, and of course the coffee.

Yeah, the perks became the inherent flaws. Node wasn't just a social joint. It was a business, which requires certain things...namely money. The back used to be filled with curbside couches, and a television that promoted the look and feel of your parents basement, a place that didn't require you to purchase anything.

The 24 hour, all ages policy was a seductive idea for under agers to escape from their scrutinizing parents.

And the smoke was nearly debilitating. A non-smoking area was eventually built in back, but it required a trek through two rooms of carcinogen fumes.

The night life left the place in a state unsuitable for the daytime crowd.

It is probably inevitable that the place would going to have to close down. In the end it was a place of business, not a babysitter. I do like to believe, though, that the majority of the people who frequented the place, whether they bought anything or not, understand and appreciate the beauty of the idea behind Node.

So, as we bid Node a fond and unfortunate farewell, the question is now is, where to next?