The Gelato Spot

Thursday nights are my “study night” – the night where I leave after dinner and study until bedtime at some local place. Sometimes I go to Borders. I like Borders because of their quiet environment, free wi-fi, and the fact that I don’t feel obligated to buy anything like I do at a coffee shop. However, the downside to Borders is that it closes at 10pm and I usually like to study until 11pm.

This often leads me to The Gelato Spot. The Gelato Spot is a modern little gelato and coffee shop with good, overpriced gelato. The upside to studying at the Gelato Spot is that I feel obligated to buy gelato. Gelato is good. However, this place is annoying because they only let you put one flavor in a small, and a small costs $3.69. I appreciate the Gelato Spot (still annoyed that this place does not have an appropriate nickname… pretty sure they did that on purpose), because it’s open until 11pm, which coincides with my typical studying limit for one evening.

So the pros to this place are that I get to eat gelato while I study and that it is open until 11pm. The cons are that the gelato is expensive and I only get one flavor. However, there is one new factor that I discovered last night, and I’m not sure if it’s good or bad or just another intersting thing about living in Socttsale. I’m pretty sure this place is run and frequented by the Mafia. I’m not kidding. If there are remnants of the Mafia left in the Southwest (and my grandparents swear that the mafia used to basically run Las Vegas in the 70s), I’m pretty sure they are living in Old Town Scottsdale.

I’ve always noticed that many of the patrons of The Gelato Spot seem a little European. Lots of accents and trendy, European-ish clothing. But it was not until last night, in the middle of the most boring reading about psychoanalysis and the ecomony, that I stopped to do my own full analysis of The Gelato Spot. Every guy in the place had an accent – and I’m pretty they were all Italian accents. It makes sense, since gelato is from Italy and the Mafia is from Italy. I also paid attention to the weird Euro clothing trends on every guy in the place. And then I picked up bits of pieces of the conversation behind me. Three men talking about business things, and I’m pretty sure I heard one guy say: “That’s a lot of money. What are you going to do if he doesn’t pay?” Long pause. “Kill him. Unless he kills us first.” It was said in a mildly joking tone. But who jokes about that kind of stuff? I have never talked about killing someone who owed me money. Killing has never entered into any of my business transactions. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t really a joke. I’m pretty sure it was just the Mafia at work.