Both of my sons are currently living in big cities and we have traveled, of course, to visit them often.  

During these visits, we’ve seen a lot of neat places – places those of us from small towns don’t frequent much.

My oldest son changed jobs a few times, went back for more schooling, and is now in a job market where he hops from one opportunity to a better opportunity. Coming from a background where people stay in jobs and homes their entire lives, this behavior sometimes makes my head spin.  

During some of these transitions, he has worked in some higher-end restaurants to make some extra bucks, especially when he was going back to school.  I was always impressed with these places, as they seemed to be a little fancy and different.

My daughter-in-law, a lovely person who is a coffee aficionado, was actually a general manager at one of those higher-end spots: a coffee shop located inside an upscale department store that had been fashioned out of an old factory. This place had clothing stores, furniture stores, and the like, full of woven chairs and intricate throw pillows that were too expensive to throw anywhere, or indeed, be called pillows.  

Did I mention the coffee prices? A small cup of some very delicious brew cost way more than I would be willing to spend most days.

After we saw one of the side-gig restaurant job locations of my son and my bonus daughter’s coffee shop, we went and sat in the somewhat fancy little pub at the end of the converted factory hallway and next to a dress shop where some of the clothes prices could feed our family for a long time. Also, the pub had live music, which was pretty high-brow.

“These places are pretty upscale. I feel a little underdressed,” I said to my son.

“Yes. It’s a bougie place.  There are a lot of these types of spots around here,” my son retorted as a lady walked by in a wide-brimmed hat with a toy poodle in her purse.

Now, I wasn’t totally sure of the meaning of the word “bougie,” so I did a little research on its origin and it apparently refers to a group of people who are a tad pretentious; these people have expensive tastes and come off as a little materialistic.

Well shoot, I thought it was a good thing to be “bougie.” After all, I really liked the coffee shops, the restaurants, and the cool night spots we went to.  

We went to a jazz club one night that had a cigar bar in the front, and then the patrons could go downstairs through a little door that resembled an old-fashioned speakeasy, and duck your head into a velvet-curtained basement where fantastic jazz music was being played. It was the sort of thing you’d see in movies.

Speaking of a speakeasy, there is also a place there where patrons can go into an old phone booth, dial a secret number, get told a secret word, and then be ushered in to a great restaurant with awesome food and ambiance.

I really liked all this bougie stuff.

To me, it meant unique, unusual, and thinking outside the box. It meant trying new things and people who wore crumpled shorts and old denim shirts and didn’t try to look too put together with their billion dollar dogs and sports cars.

I couldn’t help it. I liked it.

During our recent visit to the city, we moved one son to a new apartment and packed the other one up to move to a different city to the north. Before leaving their current city, where they had lived for five years, my bonus daughter (also known as my daughter-in-law) insisted we stop in the wee hours of the morning at another “bougie” coffee shop; of course, Michelle and I were all in.  

Michelle shares my bougie enthusiasm.

“This is our favorite place to drink coffee,” they both said with a little sadness. 

We sat for a while and soaked in the bougie atmosphere. Some folks from the neighborhood came and went, and it was a little bit like the coffee shop in the TV show “Friends.”

“A lot of our friends hang out here,” they said, again with a melancholy glisten in their eye.

As we left, I assured my kids that they would find some comfortable, bougie places in their new town.

My son looked at me as though I didn’t need to be using that word, much less know what it meant.

Guess I may be too old to be bougie.