My role, I guess, was that I was the young kid. I started hanging around Rancho Notorious and St Jerome’s in 2004. I had been to the cafe before but I remember the second time I walked into El Rancho, more or less the day that started it all for me. Jagi was behind the counter and I shyly asked about a job. He told me I would need to speak with Monkey, who was next door in St Jerome’s. I went in the cafe and found this wild character, one foot on the ground the other on a bar seat, with a Coopers brown in one hand and the other gesturing wildly as he addressed his audience of fellow workers and patrons telling some sort of nonsensical story. I remember being shocked at the time by the going-ons of this mischievous character with an aptly fitting name. On approaching him and asking about the job, he raised himself from his seat with Jack Sparrow-esque drunken swagger and thrust a set of keys into my hand pronouncing that I was to start work tomorrow afternoon as he wished to continue drinking late into the night. I remember him telling me pay was $35 for the 5-hour shift from 12-5pm. I later found out it was only $25 at $5 an hour with the perk of all the coffee and cheese toasties you could eat. It was the people like Monkey, Sivaan, Jagi and Alex that all seemed to take me under their wing that made that place special to me.
