or, what’s the deal with all the orange?

you have to smile when you see the color orange- it’s that simple. orange makes you happy. happier, at least. it’s warm, inviting, and happy. and for some reason it’s kind of funny, and smiles and laughter are really good for you.

i prefer an orange with a little more yellow in it, kind of a creamsicle-y color over a more aggressive OSHA or General Lee orange.  before i had finished my menu, before the Gromlet and Green Rooms were even thoughts in my head, i painted the truck orange, which stoked me out for the work that followed. it still does. i painted the walls and ceiling of a long hallway in the entrance of an old apartment kind of a nectarine-y orange once, it warmed up my home and made everyone that came in smile. i’d like to think that my truck, and all of the obsessive orangeness around it, does the same thing. if you don’t feel the same way, well, you’re weird.

orange does the body, the mind, and the heart good. orange is good.

and it’s no secret anymore, it’s everywhere. i used to see one or two other people a week wearing an orange t-shirt, now it’s all the rage. it’s kind of a movement, of sorts. or it should be.

think about it. if everyone who owns an orange shirt could use their own reusable travel mug for their morning coffee, we’d reduce the need for a few hundred trees being cut down for paper production.  thousands, more realistically. it would be pretty cool, if you ask me.

if every one of those people with an orange shirt convinced just one friend to do the same, we’d have a movement of tree-protecting people. imagine if they all were wearing something orange.  and if all of those people chose greener (or orange-r) products, together we’d send a message that couldn’t be denied. and if all those people sending messages and drinking their drinks out of reusable non-disposable cups were using post consumer recycled paper products, recycling all of the products they could rather than adding waste to the landfills, and drinking organically and sustainably grown products, there’d be a gigantic message being sent.

and it would be super freaking cool.

and if all those people carrying around their own mugs, sending out these messages and using their recycled paper towels and napkins and toilet paper were getting these aforementioned beverages from a certain orange coffee truck, well, it would just be rad.  i ‘d just be touched, really. in the most orange of ways.

just think about it. orange can change the world.

besides all that stuff, orange is beautiful and bad ass at the same time.  so many beautiful things in the world naturally come in orange, and in all different kinds of orange, too: sunsets, fruits and vegetables of all kinds: papayas, peaches, nectarines, melons, squashes, carrots, juices, birds of paradise, other flowers, puppies, kittens, organic coffee mobiles. you dig?

(sorry, got a little worked up. anyway....)

i know, you’re probably asking yourself, what about the orange drink? trust me, it was in development. tentatively named the Orangelo, i tried to come up with some kind of orange mocha-y thing that would be as tasty good as the other drinks on the menu. unfortunately, as the green straw place has demonstrated, those orange mochas are funky. and not in a shake-your-bad-thing way, but in an yucky i-really-wish-i-didn’t-take-a-sip-of-this kind of way. i didn’t want to subject anyone i knew to something that wouldn’t put a smile on their face, so the orangelical idea was retired. thanks for asking.

and, yes, that photo is me in my orange parachute man Halloween costume from a few years ago. (remember those plastic toys with the strings and the cellophane parachute- well, there you go).

remember, orange isn’t just a color, it’s a movement. and not in a weird culty way.  also remember, if you bring your own cup to the orange truck you can do something green while saving some green. okay? good. thanks for the listen.