Coffee Houses - part 2
Mark K December 27th, 2007
What do I look for in an ideal coffee house?
1. Good coffee and food - the barristas are consistent (especially with the foam) and there is at least coffee-breakfast snack-type food. Regular cups (not disposable) if you’re planning to stay while you drink!
2. A variety of seating options - tables, a counter, quiet and noisy, outdoors, a few overstuffed chairs and a fireplace would be really nice
3. A certain amount of ambient white noise and background music is good
4. One person with a Loud voice at a nearby table - especially someone going on and on about law, politics or selling something - is bad.
5. Lots of people involved in interesting work or conversations - writers, artists, students, discussion groups, people speaking in other languages, eccentric types speaking in their own languages… An atmosphere that sweeps you up in a wave of creativity and good conversation.
6. Interesting stuff on the walls - artwork, photos, a bulletin board with ads and posters that make for good reading while waiting your turn for the bathroom key
7. A friendly staff - bonus points if they recognize you and know ahead of time what you are likely to order
8. A nice ratio of regulars with visitors
9. Live music from time-to-time - poetry readings are good too.
10. Interesting architecture - a little old and funky is good, with some brick, wood and chipped paint in evidence, a good ratio of hard and soft surfaces - also electric outlets conveniently located (see Extension cord entry)
Can you add to this list?
- mindfulness
- Comments(7)
i agree with these… what coffee place would you say meets all these requirements?
Talia - I would say that my “home” coffee house, The Aroma Cafe in San Rafael, meets all of these requirements. There is always a lot of activity there - there’s even an artist who does his painting right at his table. My other favorite place is The Coffee Roastery in San Anselmo. It’s smaller and quite a bit noisier and sometimes I have to leave there and go to the library after awhile. It’s a favorite meeting place for mountain and road bikers and they sometimes have live music. Their former location, across the street, was really tiny and had a little outdoor patio in the back. I think I liked that place even better. The Uptown Cafe in San Luis Obispo, where I took this picture, is very nice. People take their paper cups with them when they travel and have someone take a picture of them sipping coffee in front of the Eiffel tower, at Burning Man, or on the beach in Hawaii. They then send the picture to the Uptown Cafe, where they are displayed on the walls. I really like their motto: “Uptown Cafe - Home of the velvet foam.” It’s true too, they have thick and creamy foam on their drinks, with lots of (this is very important) small bubbles!
I enjoyed this entry. I don’t even drink coffee (I like tea), but I like that you gave some thought to what you like to see in a coffee house rather than just hanging out there. Pausing to notice is important for appreciating what’s good in our lives.
I love your list and wish there was a coffee place like that around here. My favorite, which actually meets most of the criteria on your list, is Frankly Coffee. They have the nicest decor, very Tuscan looking. They have big comfy leather chairs that roll, so you can move them around. The staff is warm and friendly and they have a nice fireplace for chilly days. I very seldom find myself distracted here as the clientèle is quite respectful. They also have a free wireless connection, which is what I would add to your list.
I like to do research sometimes when I’m at a coffee shop and an internet connection is vital. I hate how the Starbucks make you pay (you have to have a cell phone account and they charge you 25/month for unlimited use). Every coffee shop should have a free connection.
Brenda,
I don’t know how I left Internet connection off my list. My local place sells a one-day Internet card for $5 (if you have your own laptop) and they also have a computer you can use for an hourly rate. One day when I asked for an Internet card, the guy at the counter asked if I had my own computer. I asked him if he was going to offer to sell me one if I said “No”. I don’t think he appreciated my joke…
I used to go to the Uptown Espresso in Seattle’s Uptown/Lower Queen Anne neighborhood. I lived a couple of blocks away so I logged a lot of hours there. I liked the fact that the employees played whatever music they wanted. Even if I didn’t really care for the music, I liked the fact that it reflected the tastes of a real human being. Sometimes I will actually like an individual song in some canned music play lists, but in the aggregate you can almost hear the people sitting around a board room trying to come up with songs that will make people consume faster. I wrote about corporate music in an essay called “The Huey Lewis Factor.†I think the title says it all so there’s no need to actually read the essay.
I thought a lot about background music while sitting in Uptown Espresso. Certainly no one could accuse them of trying to exploit music for profit, or use it as some sort of marketing strategy, not when you are listening to an hour and a half set, commercial free, of Black Sabbath at 7 a.m., thanks to the whims of the 18 year old barista/rock drummer. I wish that every retail business didn’t feel the need to pipe in muzac during business hours. Silence is definitely preferable to canned/corporate play lists.
This particular Uptown also had a good bike rack right out in front that doubled as a seating area when there was fine weather and a big crowd. It also made a great hitching post for those local Seattleites lucky enough to own a dog or two.
My new café doesn’t have wireless access or any sort of music, unless you count the bells of the 15th century church a few steps across the plaza. For weddings and other special occasions they ring every bell in the tower. It’s almost enough racket to shake your café con leche right off the table.
I think that cafes fill a very fundamental human need to share space. Just being in the same place with others, even if you aren’t talking, is a very necessary form of human communication.
A perfect coffee house
The first thing that comes to mind is, does the cup make a difference? Paper, foam or porcelain? If a cup didn’t make a difference, then we probably wouldn’t have so many kinds. I think the cup makes a huge difference. It makes the coffee tastes different. Kind of crazy huh?. A paper or foam cup is so— temporary. It actually tells others that you are not in it for the long haul. You want your coffee and you are out of there. That’s okay if that’s the message you want to send. There are as many subtleties that are assigned to the type of cup as there are to the coffee itself. The flavors, the darkness, the lightness, the aromatic, the nutty, too many to mention. Foam cups don’t seem to fit the earth conscious profile very well. I mean, how earth conscious can you be if you drink from a foam cup? It doesn’t seem to add up. But the porcelain cup. Now that’s something to consider. It says, well for one, sophistication (please hear me out). Don’t take sophistication in this sense as a social strata looking to be obtained through the use of a porcelain cup. Or for that matter, a positive or negative event. It simply means you have developed a liking for a delivery system of your coffee that is a step above the truck stop/McDonalds mentality of drinking from a paper or foam cup (although I actually like Big Mac’s coffee). If you like truck stop coffee, it’s not difficult to find and you can have it in a foam cup too!.
Forgive me, I digress. So why in the world do we go to coffee houses anyway? If I had to guess, I would say it was for the ambiance. You can be social, but yet, you don’t have to socialize. I think others would say it’s a great place to meet people and have conversations with them. It is if you are outgoing and not shy to the point of extinction. That’s a whole other story. I think the shyness thing is probably good for society as a whole. I mean, have you ever known somebody that can talk and start a conversation with absolutely anyone they meet? I have known those types and they make me sick: Sick because I want to be like them. It’s a horrible thing to want to be like somebody else. It’s difficult enough to be like me!. How does that superman song go, “It ain’t easy to be me!†There you have it.
Coffee houses are really art happening. A work in progress. How much inspiration comes from sitting in the coffee house and writing someone’s story that is in there? How about sketching someone? (I so wish I could draw). It is a great exercise to pick somebody out of a coffee house crowd and write their story. Of course we have no idea what their story is, but it is a lot of fun to make it up. Writers of fiction have the best job in the world. They get to make up somebody’s story. They almost get to play God in a very limited sense.
Sorry, back to the cup. I think porcelain is best. It represents a kind of permanence, and besides, it’s much more fun to drink from a ceramic cup than a paper or foam one (at least I think so). I admit, the taste thing is arguable, but don’t you think pastries taste better with black coffee? Now that’s a value judgment if I ever heard one. Mind you now, I don’t eat a lot of pastries, but I can’t imagine one without a cup of good, strong black coffee. I know some people just can’t drink coffee black, but I think that in order to truly enjoy the taste and subtleties of coffee, it should be imbibed in it’s blackest form. Another of my unsolicited opinions.
Did I ever get to the question at hand? Hmmmm. Okay, I believe the question was, What do I look for in an ideal coffee house?
Well, to be honest with you, I don’t look for anything. I let that “anything†look for me. It’s a great dynamic in our lives. Julia Cameron in her book “The Artist’s Way†talks about something called “synchronicityâ€. Basically, once we put our mind to something, it doesn’t matter what, the forces of the universe begin to work in unison and harmony for the achievement of that goal or self imposed purpose. A strange and wonderful conjoining of elements and forces begin to work in an eerie sort of way.
Here is an example on a very small scale. Let’s say you are a writer sitting in a coffee house and you are beginning some character development on a new novel, story, essay-whatever, but you need some distinguishing traits to impose on a new character. The people at the next table are talking about a mutual acquaintance that they all have, and they’re going off on this person, of course he is non-present, and they start to give you great material for developing your character. Some would call it luck, others coincidence. Julia Cameron would call it “synchronicity!†You get the idea
So I guess one of my ideas of an ideal coffee house would be one where there are lots of conversations to “eavesdrop†on. I am wretchedly invasive on other peoples space and privacy in coffee houses (keep that in mind if you notice me sitting nonchalantly in a coffee house near you!). And all of things that Mark and his respondent bloggers have said goes for me too. The music, the people, the comfortable chairs and internet access, poetry readings, they are all big factors. However, I do live in a college town, and I get irritated when every seat in the house is taken by college students doing there homework. They park their carcasses for the whole day and drink one cup of coffee. I at least order fancy expensive drinks and only stay for maybe an hour.
Sorry to ramble. I really enjoy this blogsite. This is my first EVER reply to a blog and I think I talk too much.
Thanks