Pasadena: Places and Pleasures : It’s not Paris, but if you close your eyes and smell the cappuccino . . .

When I first decided at age 16 to be a writer, the future I envisioned involved, for the most part, a life among gaunt, intense people in a cafe in some exotic city--Paris, perhaps, or Alexandria.

By the time I realized that I wasn’t Hemingway and this wasn’t France, it was too late to change my mind. I was already a real live writer in my own hometown: Pasadena.

There are no plane trees in Pasadena, no Deux Garcons, no Provencal sunlight. But Pasadena, with its young magnolias and crepe myrtles, its good bookstores and libraries, holds certain charms. And after hours at the typewriter, when I feel the need (characterized by a crampiness in the back) to get out and about, to replenish myself, to check in with the human race, there are distinctly Pasadenan variations of cafe life.

Often, around four in the afternoon, when I’ve put in a good six or seven hours of writing or procrastination or both, I’ll grab a black Uniball medium point disposable pen, a yellow legal pad and have a latte at the Old Town Bakery.

The Old Town (despite its name), is the newest and hippest bakery in Pasadena. Inside, in full view, a working bakery teems with employees who churn out various specialty breads, muffins and lavish cakes. There is always one man back there beating dough with a big stick.

On the other side of the bakery is a coffee bar and sandwich counter. There are six or seven high wooden tables inside and some patio furniture outside. Joni Mitchell sings on the sound system.

If I’m hungry, I’ll have a cinnamon-raisin brioche. (The cakes, as amazing as they look, are too sweet for me--which probably says more about my disposition than the cakes themselves.) Then, I may actually write, or read the paper.

It’s a little hard to get waited on: the owner keeps trying new systems to get the customers served efficiently; clearly, someone who’s buying a loaf of bread shouldn’t have to wait for 10 minutes while the only counter person makes three cappuccinos. (The last time I was at the Old Town, there was yet another innovation and I waited in three different lines for my latte.) Still, I defected from my old bakery down the street to the Old Town primarily because the latter serves cafe latte in bowls. Drinking hot milk from a bowl reminds me of Cafe Fanny in Berkeley, of that sad movie “Betty Blue,” of France itself; but mostly, it’s elemental and comforting and makes me feel like a civilized, happy animal.

But sometimes standing in line at the bakery, I get lonesome for waiters, real waiters, the kind in French cafes with long white aprons. Periodically, when I get lonesome like that, I go to San Marino, to Julienne.

Julienne is a lovely, almost-local cafe that comes close to my precocious idea of a writer’s life, only instead of dissipated artists, there are well-groomed San Marino matrons and their designer-dressed children. Marble-topped tables, each with a small vase of ornamental kale, rosemary and lilies, sit out on the sidewalk amid arches and potted jasmine. Opera wafts from the speakers. The handsome waiters are, unlike their French counterparts, usually cheerful. The cafe au lait is strong and superb, and the scones are deluxe and buttery.

Julienne is obviously a choice for ladies’ lunch. The food is elegant and delicious, especially all dishes made with chicken, and the heavenly house rosemary raisin bread. Often, I watch the matrons and try to figure out how they stay so neatly coiffed; clearly, they haven’t spent their day snatching at their hair in front of a computer. Eating at Julienne, like trying on clothes at Chanel, is a temporary slipping into a lifestyle that, given the average book advance these days, most likely will never be mine.

Neighborhood restaurants are useful for another vital writerly function: procrastination. For the past 15 or 20 years, my old high school friends have always been able to talk me into a piece of rhubarb pie at Pie and Burger, even though I know that afterwards, in a sugar-induced torpor, I’m good for nothing except watching late-afternoon “Rockford” reruns. I’ve squandered afternoons over half a Caesar salad at the Crocodile Cafe, killed hours and filled up on bread sticks while waiting for bad service at the Market City Caffe. Whole novels have gone unwritten thanks to my extended breakfasts at Marstons.

On days when I’ve done a lot of hair snatching, or when I’m especially hungry, especially isolated, I’ll call a friend and go to the Pasadena Cafeteria for a dose of comfort food.

There’s something liberating about a cafeteria--the choice, I think, of all that food. Roast beef, roast turkey, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, lamb stew, poached fish, baked squash, creamed broccoli, tamales. Grated carrot salad, Boston cream pie, egg custard, rice pudding, gooseberry pie. Grabbing that green tray, sliding it along past the stewed prunes, the neat scoops of cottage cheese and squares of pistachio Jell-O, I’m back in lunch line at school.

I wouldn’t say it’s great food, or even nutritionally vigilant food. It’s meat and vegetables, the fare of pot lucks, church socials, Sundays at grandma’s. It’s the food of our post-World War II childhoods. And you have to be pretty darned hungry to run up a bill of more than $5 or $6 per person.

I always get macaroni and cheese (it’s got a good crust) and the jewel Jell-O, which is the most amazing quasi-edible substance I know: bright chunks of clear Jell-O embedded in lemon Jell-O made opaque with sour cream. Some people like to eat the clear chunks first and the sour cream Jell-O later; others reverse the process. I personally like to make clean cuts so that, with each bite, I see a new cross-section of the colorful, jewel-like aggregate effect. What this says about a person I have yet to discover.

What the Pasadena Caf has, more than anything, is a cross section of life. During the day, from the nearby courthouse, come jurors and jurists, cops and civil servants. From downtown, the office workers and merchants. Senior citizens outnumber them all. The cafeteria at dinner time offers, among many other observable things, studies in long-term marriages, and middle-aged children with elderly parents.

“We ought to have a writer’s club that meets here every week,” my friend Tom says. “It’d be good for character development.”

Julienne, 2649 Mission St., San Marino. (818) 441-2299 Open Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-6 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Dinner served seasonally (call ahead). Lunch for two, food only, $13 to $30.

Old Town Bakery, 166 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. (818) 792-7943. Open Sunday-Thursday 9 a.m.-11 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays until midnight. Lunch for two, food only, $10 to $20.

Pasadena Cafeteria, 325 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. (818) 792-9902. Open seven days 11 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Lunch for two, food only, $6 to $16.