If you’re at a loss for things to do in Lawrence, KS, the default options are to either go to a bar or to a coffee shop.  For the indecisive, there are a couple of combination bar/coffee shops, like Henry’s and The Bourgeios Pig.  However, for those who like to do one thing at a time, keeping your bar life and coffee shop life separate, there’s The Java Break, the only coffee shop in town open 24 hours a day.  The 24/7 business model allows people to either spend endless hours at a coffee shop instead of a bar; or to get a cup of coffee and then go to a bar; or to go to a bar and then get a cup of coffee after the bars close at 2 a.m.; or to get a cup of coffee, go to a bar, then get a cup of coffee after leaving the bar.  It’s a system that works.

Writers face similar challenges.  Write at a bar?  Write at a coffee shop?  Which to choose?  While some people write in notebooks or on laptop computers, other people take to writing on walls and tables with felt-tipped pens and permanent markers.  Perhaps this is a way of getting exposure for their work, similar to keeping a blog; I don’t know.  But there is a room at The Java Break dedicated to those people who can’t stand being confined to the traditional page and who just have to get their work out there somehow.

If ever you happen to go to The Java Break, be sure to go into the Graffiti Room and read the walls, because, as one graffiti-ist put it, “Earth without art is just ‘eh.’”

Here are some other memorable works: