Coffee nerdiness

image_pdfimage_print

Yes, I’m a coffee nerd. I like good strong full bodied coffee. I of course have my favorite roasts, beans, blends, and coffee shops. But I really want to talk about the coffee shop experience. Today, a lot of people consider Starbucks to be the coffee shop of all coffee shops. They are almost everywhere. I will admit that their marketing is wonderful. They’ve taken the country by storm. Their coffee is good, but by no means is it the peak of coffee perfection. Their shops are nice and clean, but they are missing a little bit of charm.

Now to go back a few years, about 11 or so, to when I knew nothing about coffee. If you called it coffee and it was hot, I would drink it. At that time, my youngest daughter was in Kindergarten, the oldest was 15. My wife and I needed someplace to go to start re-connecting with each other. The children were all growing up, and didn’t need quite as much attention. We also had a built in babysitter. So we started to look around for something we could do together, but wouldn’t break the bank. We found a little coffee shop. It was a charming little place where we could get a light lunch, or a desert, or just a cup of coffee or tea. We started going week after week, sometimes more than once a week. From that time on, we would even look for coffee shops on our vacations.

The local coffee shop (before Starbucks was a nationwide brand) was a place to find good coffee and good friends. It was a gathering place. In some places you would find little reading corners. Some shops would have music, some poetry readings. Some places to play chess or backgammon. But in everyone there was a place to meet people and talk. They was always a quite corner you could go to even when the place was busy at the early morning rush. They were places designed to slow down, smell the baked goods, and of course the coffee.

Then we get the fast food of coffee shops, the national brands. A hurry-up kind of place where people seem to be full of caffeine before they have their first cup of coffee. The coffee may be good, but the atmosphere suffers.

One of my daughter worked in ‘our’ little coffee shop, and it closed shortly after she graduated from college. Just two short years after my wife died. I still miss that atmosphere. There are other places to get coffee in the area. For a time there was even a shop that had a bit of atmosphere. But in today’s world those places seem to be few and far between. You can find them if you look, but you do have to look. It may not be a coffee shop, it may be a little restaurant, or donut shop, maybe even a candy shop, or an old soda fountain. There are places to find, where you can slow down to smell the coffee, or the roses, but always smell and experience the sweet breath of life itself.

4 thoughts on “Coffee nerdiness”

  1. What a sweet memory John, about you and your wife. Hope it brings a smile to your face when you think of it.

    Now in Holland, coffeeshop is not just for coffee when I am not mistaken. More for something else that seems to make people happy. Hmm. I always wondered why they called that kind of place a coffeeshop!

    Also nationwide is not the term for Starbucks anymore. Not sure if you have ever been to England, but three years ago, after my husband and mum died, I went to England with my dad and my three daughters. My husband and my mother did not have much in common, but what they both did very much enjoy was visiting Canterbury Cathedral. That place had not changed, probably never will, but one foot outside the gate, and there was a Starbucks! What the heck!

    Sorry for the long comment, couldn’t resist 🙂

    Tanja

  2. I would love to visit a soda fountain. I read an article about those the other day, and it made me really want to visit one. There was one in the town I grew up in that eventually closed, but I think I was too young to appreciate it. The article listed places you could still find them, but they were west of the Mississippi – too far for us. There are probably others closer…

Leave a Reply to justj Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *