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Coffee Shop As Place

November 1


[Laughing~Knees] Gathering around the water hole to share each other's thirst must be as old as time itself; nearly all communal creatures do it, from willows crowding the river's edge, to ants at a strip of spilled water on a baking pavement, giraffes and elephants stepping to the swamp's edge, to moose at the forest boundary and brown bears swiping for salmon. Water is life and water is the common denominator. We humans have perfected the art of carrying the water off and slaking our thirst in relative safety.


[Coffee/house] My part of Cleveland is awash in coffeehouses; their number and diversity are among Northeast Ohio's most often overlooked pleasures. One of them has become a regular objective for my daughter and me on our regular get-out-of-the-house-and-leave-Mom-in-peace expeditions ... P.


[Notes from An Eclectic Mind] - Toward the end of the sprawling Texas epic Giant Rock Hudson takes his movie family – including his Hispanic daughter-in-law and grandchildren – into Sarge’s diner. The proprietor, an Ernest Borgnine look-alike with a no service policy toward non-whites, asks them all to leave and when Hudson refuses, Sarge kicks the crap out of him. Of course it’s a victory in defeat scene because until that moment Hudson had some pretty bigoted ideas toward those members of his family as well. But it’s always the diner that gets me, the quintessential small town Texas diner with the red booths, swivel stools at the counter, and a world-weary waitress. I’ve walked into a thousand of those places and always there’s the guy in dirty work clothes who takes a seat and says, “Mabel, gimme a cup of black coffee.”


[Feathers of Hope (Numenius)] But what if you don't drink coffee?


[Conscientious] In principle, you don't go to a coffeeshop to drink coffee. You go to have a good time.


[prairie point] I'm not sure I have ever been to anything that could properly be called a coffee shop.


[Feathers of Hope (Pica)] One good thing Starbucks has given to the culture is the notion that it is fine to linger, even if you only buy one coffee...


[frizzyLogic (qB)] Long ago and far away I was going to write a book about coffee. Swimming in the wake of Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, my coffee progeny was to join the gigantic spawning of "take an object and do a timeline" small volumes of populist history.


[alembic] Nowadays, I sweeten my occasional coffee shop coffee with whatever sugar substitute happens to be on hand at my local branch of Peet’s, the Bay Area’s answer to Starbucks.


[Guild of Ghostwriters]It immediately established the main functions of a coffee shop in my life:

1) a place to roll and smoke cigarettes 2) a place for people watching 3) a place for work/job avoidance (and later, avoidance generally)


(Rachel) Near my apartment is a little district of coffee shops, yoga studio, upscale grocery and crafts boutiques. Trees and old houses abound, and dogs, and people in Birkenstocks. When I ride my bike here or walk to the grocery, there are always people sitting outside one or the other, often with dogs, reading the paper, sipping drinks, and chatting.

Also near my apartment is another sort of neighborhood, one in which Hispanic families cluster outside small stores, play on the sidewalks, and stroll in the evening.

On the surface, they seem very different places, and the homes of very different people, but shaping both is the urge to be part of a community, to be out and be seen, to be in the presence of others instead of alone.


[London and the North ] A caff is not a cafe. And a cafe is not a coffee shop. The cafes of my childhood were tea rooms. White tablecloths and silver services. Great cakes. And very quiet. Where children were expected to behave, adults talk in low voices and cakes consumed. No problem there.


[CassandraPages ]I keep going back to one little lunch/breakfast/café in particular. It doesn’t have a name, or at least I don’t know it. It’s near the internet place I used to use, and I went in the first time to have some coffee in the middle of the afternoon, and immediately saw that the food in the small, refrigerated display case was all Middle Eastern, and homemade...


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Last edited November 12, 2003 6:54 am by Beth (diff)
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