Marisa has been at our LaGuardia Place location for four years — minus the year she took off to study abroad in Paris, which she'll tell you about if you ask, and you should ask.
She has a drink named after her. Cold brew, oat milk, sugar-free vanilla. "The cold brew tastes like chocolate to me — like, fully chocolate," she says. "The sugar-free vanilla is toasted almond. And the oat milk is the fluff. It's the marshmallow." She calls it the s'mores cold brew. One of her regulars orders it every single morning and calls it the Marisa — and at this point, it basically is.
The thing she loves most about working at LaGuardia Place is the people. Not in a vague way — in a Kiana, Natalie, Noelani, and Sydnie way. She colored with them on her break during this interview. They came to her birthday party. She went to theirs. "I've literally formed friendships just through working here," she says. That's the job she actually shows up for.
Outside of Joe, Marisa is not exactly taking it slow. She just sat the LSAT. She's writing a short film. She's got a TV pilot in the works — a queer, split-timeline romance-comedy — and she already has a pitch deck. "We're going back to old TV," she says. "Twenty episodes, fifty minutes each. No more Euphoria, no more Stranger Things. Bring back long TV." She's aiming for twelve seasons. She is not joking.
She's also graduating college in two weeks, moving into her first apartment in the city with her study-abroad best friend, and making official what's basically already been true: she lives here. Grew up in Rockaway, Queens. Has spent 23 years in this city and says she's never once gotten sick of it. "I'm just really excited to actually be existing in this city," she says. "It literally revives me."
We get it.
