The Accusations: Coffee Houses

[This is an article that I wrote about a year and a half ago. I'm ditching a lot of the old files on my website and integrating them with the Blog. This is one of those posts.]

THE ACCUSATIONS: COFFEE HOUSES

"Taste has deprived me of a great many things." -Kevin Spacey, Hurlyburly

I have whittled my addictions down to one substance: coffee. I love coffee absolutely. I always have and I always will. It's my one loyal addiction that I will never give up while I'm alive. I drink coffee when I'm around other people and when I'm alone. I'm the only person that I know that is passionate about coffee as much as I am. It's laughable at first thought, but it is ink-worthy.

Recently my lifestyle has come under attack from my web of friends, family and coworkers. I've been accused of being a trendy hipster, among other undesirables, because of my coffeehouse frequenting and my love of coffee. I never recognized that there was a scene at any coffeehouse that I have ever gone to or that I was being stylish for drinking coffee. It has led to a clash of principles between me and others and it has upset me for different reasons. I'm not one to do anything trendy at all, but I'm also not part of the anti-trendy faction either. I choose what I do according to my own tastes, not whether other people agree with it.

A little history…the first time I started going to a coffeehouse that I can ever remember was with a friend George. I had met George online in a chat and after a while we became friends and decided that when I got out of Navy boot camp that we would meet and go out. The first night I met George we made plans to go to a coffeehouse. It was my first time to Chicago and I wasn't familiar with the area. I met George and we proceeded to Don's coffeehouse. Don's was in a remote area in a very squalid neighborhood. Don's is the type of place you find by either living in a place for years or from someone else who has lived there for years. This is a place where you question whether or not a cup of coffee is worth the drive and the risk of getting assaulted. It's not a place you stop in for a quick to-go cup of coffee before the slavery begins at the day job. The location provided Don's with a kind of unique social filter. It's not a place you go to for any scene or crowd because there isn't one; it's all environment. It's time travel to the 1940's at first sight. Don's is a total environment all on it's own in a place you would never expect. Odds and ends of the past collect on the walls: books, pictures, magazines, newspaper snippets, old records and random nostalgia. The furniture is all from that era, but it wasn't a café; more like a lounge. An ancient record player would be playing '40's era swing, big band and Creole jazz. You felt like you were deceiving an unspoken dress code just by walking in with contemporary apparel. Don, who was the proprietor, would first bring a sugar cube tray and an ornate cream dispenser. He only sold regular and decaf coffee, not espresso or any other derivatives of coffee. A bottomless cup of coffee was $2.00 and Don came around personally to fill your cup. The only other thing he sold was cake, pie and ice cream. George and I sat down and talked about a lot of things into the night. I learned that I loved Don's very much and that I must come back. It was a place I could go and talk with friends and it provided a refuge away from the daily toil. We sat and talked for hours that first night, savoring the coffee, the conversation, and the ambience. Don's stayed open as late as 6 a.m. as long as business was sufficient. Over the next year I would make it back to Don's at least once a month to catch up on things with George and enjoy getting away from it all. What I liked about Don's, which I never could get from any other coffeehouse since, is that it was a vital link to the past. It had life, imagination, and something to share with us about the world before us. Maybe it was a true original. There weren't any attention seekers or posh yuppies there. I found out after I had already left Chicago for a couple of years that Don decided to sell the place. Rumor has it the place went to hell and has never been the same since. I don't expect that I'll ever find anything to replace Don's. It's one of those rare places that one finds once in a lifetime and regrets ever leaving. It's now a landmark in my own personal history that I'll never forget.

After Chicago I moved to San Diego and found myself in a situation of poverty because of an oversight with my military pay. I was going through a lot of internal issues at work because of coworkers and those above me. I lived in the barracks, but it offered little in the way of seclusion and I needed somewhere cheap to go. I needed a hiding place, a sanctuary. Just down the street from the barracks was a place called Pannikin's. I stopped in and decided that it wasn't Don's, but because of the location and my situation, it would work. I stopped in more often as time swept on, reading and writing and enjoying the time after work away from the barracks and the ship. Luckily this was a private spot, as no one I knew went there even though it was out in clear view. Not long after this, the pay situation got worse and my mountain bike, the only mobility I had, was stolen. Pannikin's kind of became a home away from home during my period of indigent helplessness. What a coffeehouse offers, other than the obvious, is what William Gibson calls the Third Place: not home, not work. Coffeehouses are nice in that as long as you buy a cup of coffee you can stay there as long as you want.

After I found Pannikin's, I brought my car from back home out to San Diego and decided to expand my horizons and find other coffeehouses. I was living on the ship, which is actually worse than the barracks and again, I needed a safe haven. I decided to do some investigating and scope some other places. Eventually I found Lestat's and it's probably the closest thing I've found to Don's, but it's still nothing like it at all. It's in a sort of seedy neighborhood, although not as bad as Don's. In Lestat's I found a sort of second home, too. At that time I was spending time at a lot of different coffeehouses on the weekend just to stay off the ship and save money. There would be days where I only had ashtray change and I had to buy coffee and breakfast burritos for every meal because it was all I could afford.



In all these places I never really noticed a scene or a group that was trying to be in vogue with current hipster standards. If there was one, I was certainly not part of it. I don't talk to people there and I don't really pay much attention to the current anything. I go there to enjoy my time and it's totally insular. I go there and engage in simply buying a cup of coffee and quietly finding a corner to nestle in. I usually go there to read, write, sip on coffee and think. I'm oblivious to any emerging people patterns. I'm strictly indifferent to these things. I'm a people watcher, but it's passive voyeurism. I don't do anything with the information I gather. I choose to go there, despite how many other people go there or don't go there. I get more disapproval from people who claim that I'm trendy, which means I'd be influenced by outside sources, something I avoid at all costs. I think what it is, more than anything, is that during the time when it became trendy to call a coffeehouse trendy, I was going through my poor boy phase and not paying attention to media or people in general. Maybe I was ill informed as to the scene going on in other parts of the world. I wasn't aware that coffeehouses were blacklisted as being a place where hipsters hang out and that I should not go there lest I be branded a trend follower. I was more worried about my own continued existence than trying to impress people to acquire friends. Looking back on it, Don's had no scene whatsoever. Pannikin's didn't either. Lestat's, if anything, had some sort of scene going on, although it's just a gathering of arty types from the neighborhood. A wide spectrum of people go there, so there is not one dominant demographic. You can find anyone at Lestat's on any given day.

I have noticed a scene at other places. There is a place in Hillcrest, San Diego that is called the Living Room that had quite the scene. The Hillcrest area is known for its alternative scene, as it is the homosexual Mecca of San Diego. At the Living Room there was so much of a scene that I found out after a while that some of the people who went there didn't even purchase anything, they just loitered and caused trouble. Business went downhill and they were forced to close down. I remember at one point seeing the whole front patio area covered with people as though there was a lesbian talent show going on inside. If there was a scene to be seen, it was here and it was mostly a gay/alternative crowd and some college students studying.

I think the accusers tend to believe that my "coffeehouse frequenting" seems to be a natural evolution stemming from freeing myself from my Midwest upbringing and moving to California. They somehow think that moving to California has caused me to be some uppity urban sophisticate who hangs out in coffeehouses to define my new lifestyle. This is hardly the case. I think they tend to lump all coffeehouses together under the same classification. I haven't mentioned Starbucks thus far because I find that Starbucks has a little bit too much of the "mall coffeehouse" syndrome. What Starbucks lacks, from the ones that I have been to, is environment. It's extremely corporate and the backdrop is always a little too perfectly calculated for my tastes. I do enjoy Starbucks for a different reason: the coffee is first rate, the service is always prompt and helpful and Starbucks is global. I love the fact that I can go to one in the Middle East and get good coffee and quality service, but I never dwell at a Starbucks any longer than it takes to get my coffee and disappear.

If I was ever trying to be a part of something by going to a coffeehouse, it was to be a part of the "coffeehouse intellectuals" as some might commonly call them. I'd rather be dubbed a bookworm than a jock. I'd rather be ridiculed for what I am than pretending to be something else. I'd rather sit and read, free of concern from the ubiquitous media contagion flowing into most homes via cable TV or satellite, than sit through a sitcom or the mind-numbing commercials threaded through it. If people think that being a bookish fellow who likes to sit and read and drink coffee is pretentious, that's fine by me. Similar responses have been made about my love for sushi and other ethnic foods. Of course I'm doing it just to be unique. If I watch a movie that no one has ever heard of, I'm eccentric. If I have a particular taste in music and choose to listen to my own music instead of programmed radio, I'm being stubborn. If I'm agitated because the human scum in line in front of me is an inept time-crook, I'm cruel for being upset that he wasted a few minutes of my life. If I have an aversion to clothing with labels because it turns me into a walking advertisement, I'm being a fuddy-duddy. If I'm particular about how certain things are done, I'm being persnickety. I hear these sentiments all the time and it makes me feel like I'm doing something right. I'll continue on my own orbit, ignoring what other people say and storming new paths for myself on my own terms. It takes a strong person to accept criticism, look it over for validity and do what he chooses despite what others think.

[For the follow-up article, please click here.]