Five Senses of Zick’s

Last Thursday I spent a little bit of time in Zick’s, our pizza/pub games place in Poteat on the Quad.  I sat there long enough to take notes for a Five Senses post and then got tied up in something and didn’t post it.  Better late than never, though.  Here goes.

I see…

– Two girls sitting at different booths in Zick’s.  Both with long hair.  One is on her phone texting someone but looking at her open laptop.  The other is studying with an open book and eating her pizza.

– Empty pool tables.

– A guy and a girl come in and plop their jackets and bag down on a chair.  They are getting ready to play a game of pool and are gathering the balls, pool cues, etc.

– A napkin on the floor, just kind of crushed up and sad looking.

– Several flat screen TVs hung on the walls.  The two by the pool tables are both tuned to ESPN.  The third one by the booths looks like some kind of game show.

– A “This Week at Zick’s” sign near the entrance to where you order pizza.  It lists activities for each evening – acoustic singers, etc.  Sunday night was a viewing of The Walking Dead at 9 pm for fans of that TV show (though I can’t imagine why you’d want to mix eating pizza with watching flesh-eating zombies).

– A new patron of Zick’s sits down at the tall bar seats by the window.  She is sporting a seriously chic pair of boots.  Not the tall ones a lot of the girls are wearing, these are upper ankle.  My shoe envy starts twitching.

– Subtle PDA from the guy and the girl who have started playing pool.  I hadn’t caught on that they were a couple until I saw them holding hands just now.

– Another new patron – a guy with a big backpack comes in to order.

– A stack of board games beneath a coffee table by the comfy chairs in Zick’s.  The boxes look like they have all been opened and used multiple times.

– Out the window, I see a very tall guy and a girl with long blonde hair laughing and talking as they pass by the window closest to me.  They come in to eat.

– Someone skateboarding across the Quad.

– A guy on the Quad folding his arms across his chest as he walks – the way you do when your coat isn’t warm enough and you’re trying to conserve as much body heat as possible.  I also see a lot of folks outdoors with their hands in their pockets because of the cold.

I hear…

– Indie/alternative music piped through the sound system.  It’s music from Fall Out Boy, Death Cab for Cutie, Kings of Leon and the like.

– Crinkling of a plastic bag a student opens.

– Chatter from the food service staff.

– The sounds of the pool balls being racked, then the clinking of pool cues as they are taken from their holder.

– Sniffing.  It’s cold outside and people’s noses are running.

– Jingling keys that are hanging off a girl’s backpack, held in place by a carabiner.  As she walks through Zick’s, there’s a metallic jingle.

– The refrigerator opening and closing in the food prep area as they make more food.

– The crack of the cue ball as the girl-guy combo breaks and starts playing.

– A male voice ordering pizza.  The servers are trying to convince the girl with him that she needs to eat something too.  Turns out she does not like pizza.  As an aside, it’s great to hear some banter between the staff at Zick’s and the students.  A female staffer is acting very warm and friendly to the students and chatting with them the way an older woman/friend of the family might.  It makes me feel like she cares for her students, and I like to hear it.

– Jackets being unzipped.

I smell…

– Cold air.  I expected as soon as I got into Zick’s it would smell strongly of pizza, but mostly it just smells like cold air.  That intensifies every time the doors open and a new person enters or leaves.

– Pizza – finally the smell reaches me when someone walked close enough to my table for me to get a whiff.

I touch…

– The smooth surface of the table where I am sitting.  It’s pretty tactile, this table.  While it has a really smooth varnish on it, there are pits and indentations in the wood, and if you run your finger along it you can feel the variations in the table surface.

I wasn’t there for a meal, so nothing in the I taste column, but I can say the pizza smelled great.

That’s your Five Senses of Zick’s!  Note, the pictures throughout are not ones I took that day – they are shots from our photo archive.