Notes from the field
I’ve recently returned home to coffee shop heaven from a three-week business trip throughout the east coast.
From Vermont to Manhattan to the wilds of central Florida no town holds a cafe scene that compares to the one in our little Rocky Mountain hamlet. The following are the high- and lowlights from my recent travels.
Throughout the trip I interrogated my friends, googled, researched and found a dozen or so of the best shops. But I found the the best c-shop by absolute random chance and surprisingly in the ritzy confines of Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood. Wandering around after stepping off the train at the end of the line with two hours to kill, I almost succumbed to the Border’s across the street when my spider sense (more on that in a subsequent blog) alerted me to the presence of the Chestnut Hill Coffee Company. A great shop, with all the goods. The bathroom architecture is cool and worth a special trip to the john. To be sure the pretentious neighborhood is a bit of a turn off, but who from Boulder can cast stones about such things? (Check out the CoffeeGeek write up: http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/worldregional/useast/254247)
The second best lives at the other end of the economic spectrum but nonetheless a classic. I’ve got to give the Langdon Street Cafe in Montpelier Vermont full respect for carrying the great Vermont hippy experiment on into GenX/Y. Their Army ★of Fun t-shirt satisfyingly twists that self-centered-meatheaded Army slogan into hippy-funk… cultural aikido at its best.
There’s not a piece of furniture in the place that is less than 15 years old and cost more than $10. On Fri-Sat nights free (donation), live and most surprising to this son of Central VT, GOOD(!) music starts up at 7pm. The crowd that emerges from the woodwork to catch and join the spectacle runs the gamut from multi-pierced-appalachian-hipsters to nuevo-hippy-GenX parents and boomer-lawyers. The coffee sucks, food marginally better, but who cares? If you want unbroken perfection go find a Starbuck’s in any Blandburg in the world. Langdon Street is one-of-a-kind.
The other c-shop experiences on the trip spanned from a joke (instant coffee in an Orlando hotel) to obnoxious (NYC).
What is it with Manhattan coffee shops? First, given the population density it is a virtual c-shop desert, the best you can hope for is one every ten blocks. After sifting through the endless sands of oh-too-hip designer handbag/shoe/jewelry shops, you’ll likely find your coffee oasis less than welcoming. Though economically inexplicable, you’ll find empty tables surrounded by outlets permanently capped with solid covers. The one spot downtown that has open plugs (Aroma, on Houston & Greene, an Isreali chain) provides only one square foot of deskspace per user on an outward facing counter. Staff everywhere are generally hostile toward sit-and-stay customers, but maybe hostility is just endemic in NYC, and doesn’t apply specifically to coffee shops.
Further, I have yet to find an open network in NYC that allows outgoing mail. Fine, I understand the problem of spammers, but I don’t accept that there is no technical solution, i.e., scans for outgoing spam or limits the number messages per hour. For the benefit of society some reformed hacker should develop a freeware solution to this problem.
Lastly, a great shop in Manhattan (Epistrophe, SoHo, on Mott between Spring and Kenmare) that I’ve had the pleasure of visiting previously has one serious drawback, it doesn’t open until noon. Huh? Apparently the management doesn’t realize that an espresso machine, employees that know how to use it, free internet and lots of tables with plugs, creates a de facto coffee shop. We can hope that they come to their senses soon.
