Judd Campbell Interview: from afrodisiacmag days

A Stand-Up City

Hanging With Judd At The Corner Café

 

Durban is not the city to visit if you want to get lost. If you’ve fled to confront your skeletons in Asian closets, Durbanites will know. If you’ve returned with your European backpack, we will know.

We will know and we will mock your temporary and over-articulate exotic accent. No clan makes fun like a Durban clan can. Hell, we say ‘fush’ and operate on a lower internal currency to our sister cities. Durban knows comedy.

 

We’re a city staging stand-up. And if Durbs is comedy central, there’s a man hanging around the sidewalks of Glenwood, right in the belly of the new suburban cool, who is playing host.

 

Even if you don’t know Judd Campbell, you know Judd Campbell. His concept precedes him.

 

I haven’t been able to open our lunchtime meeting before Judd is discussing his love for Pina Coladas, horse-riding (bareback, please), walks in the rain and Puerto Rican girls. At times, I get the feeling that I am in the middle of Mardi Gras, or a roller rink, or that time with my BMX when I was 8.

 

Judd is like that. Disarming. So concurrently genteel and sarcastic that I can’t tell the difference between mockery and sincerity and I don’t really give a continental anyway.

 

I’m suspicious of the trendy hotspots. I find myself treading the dissolve into formula-fetish and fixation on the creases in my lap as I perch on pokey cocktail stools and long for the couch and my flannel jimjams. But Judd’s concept for The Corner Café is a smart one. His is a guerilla cool, unassuming and uncomplicated and damn astute. He tricks us into accountability.

 

Based on the idea of eco-health, Judd tells me about the time he’s spent with chip-fryers and apathy, and how he wants to build a consciousness around what his restaurant  ‘puts into people’.

“It’s our penance”, he says, explaining The Corner Café’s system of environmentalism, avoiding unnecessary waste, microwaves and, basically, doing the cool things for our bodies and surroundings that we’d all love to do but we couldn’t be arsed.

Now it doesn’t seem that much of a mission.The Corner Café is making it cool to go green.

“But I’m no hippie”, Judd insists, with eyebrow raised.

 

My fruit salad smoothie arrives and he leans over to inspect it.

We are sweating out our personalities. It’s one of those Durban days where you hate the city and feel like it’s all you’ll ever need. Where its inhabitants slip into a makeshift island style and our attempts to keep cool turn us into the best kind of unconscious-cool and I decide that we occupy the greatest space on earth.

You’ve gotta meet this guy, man.

“I never wanted to be a manager, or an owner… I wanted to be a waiter until I turned 45.”

Twelve years in the industry, and Judd’s still playing.

The system is simple, Judd on the floor, rocking it; the food is that flawless meeting of fusion-sophistication and a chilled Durban chow you’re craving around lunch. And it’s good for you.

 

Born on the Bluff, raised on the Berea and fiercely loyal to Durban, Judd plays tennis, watches too many films and laughs at stupidity, Monty Python and the folks in our city. He is fragments of the best scenes in your favourite movies, or those moments you share with friends but expect no outsider to understand. Somewhere along the line he leaps up to show me his new step-counter and recalls how he walked 15,000 steps on Saturday. That’s 12 k’s. 203 calories. All in the restaurant. Judd doesn’t stop. When The Corner Café is closed, he works voluntary shifts for friends. This guy is the ‘Where’s Wally’ of the restaurant world. 

“You have 45 minutes to get to know someone. It’s the best job in the world.”

And with that, Judd’s back to work, meeting and greeting and chocolate chip cookie-ing. He closes our meeting so perfectly, he’s even playing host to my writing.

 

Do your fine selves a favour and take a time out in the stand-up city. Chill on the corner like it used to be done, and when your mouth isn’t full, kids, ask Judd about the water. It’s the best part of his set. And he’s there all week.

 

The Corner Café, 031 2010219

Open Monday to Friday 7am – 5pm, Saturday 7am – 4pm  

    

Fitter. Happier. More productive.

Animation from 'Tree Boy' by Tessa Comrie

I don’t think you should tell her she doesn’t have any blood.

As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving – not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are…

(Synecdoche, New York)