two woodwork shops
As in, “in the woodwork.” As in, how the hell would you ever find these places unless you were there in the neighborhood buying drugs? Funny what lurks in the nook and crannies of Boulder….
First is Great Awakenings. They co-locate in Art Cleaners’ front on 15th between Arapahoe and Canyon (1715 15th Street). As we noted in the “by roaster” post, they serve Cafe Solé coffee, which is halfway decent. They have free wifi but they’re not set up as a work space. They have one long bar-height counter along the front windows but no tables. One wouldn’t normally think to work there because of the shared space with a dry cleaners, so the feel is of a walk-in/walk-out shop. That said, it’s probably a good place to sit for an hour when you absolutely need a coffee shop space with free wifi and no other patrons sitting around you (how’s that top-secret business idea coming?).
Second is Shamane’s (co-located with Rustica Baking?). This is probably our find of the century because the location is so damn random. Shamane’s is not a coffee shop but a craft bakery that has a retail front serving coffee. It’s located deep within a slate of warehouse businesses on Wilderness Place and if you’ve never heard of Wilderness Place, don’t worry, your knowledge of Boulder isn’t being severly challenged. Wilderness Place is the right turn off of Valmont when driving east towards Foothills Parkway, just after you pass over the railroad tracks (map). It’s not a retail or residential destination but a chockablock full of random warehousey shops and Rustic is buried deep within, a “Suite 800″ sign right above the door. I won’t tell you why I was in the area and stumbled upon it, but it was a worthy find. They serve Cafe Solé (must be a coincidence) and damn fine pastries right out of their craft workshop in the back. Absolutely no working environment as this is a tiny, opportunistic retail front clearly set up to cater to the local employees of the Wilderness Place “office park,” but worth a visit if you’re already there.
Best of Boulder? Um, yea….no
Once again the popularity contests come out and distort reality. And we love reality. We don’t love gimmicked phone-tree (email tree?) influenced “popularity” polls. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the Best of Boulder 2008 has — who else? — Vic’s as the best coffee shop in Boulder. Ug.
Vic’s, people? Can you possibly be serious? The only thing this proves is that Vic’s is the best at getting their friends, neighbors and relatives to vote. What does it take, an email address? Yeah, I’ve got five, and my uncle in Michigan has ten. Yeah, we just won best coffee shop blog.
The real deal with Vic’s is that they serve some of the worst coffee in Boulder (it is Allegro, also served by numerous other shops) and the flagship shop is dark, crowded and otherwise laid out in almost unworkable way. The socialite crowd needed a nearby see-and-be-seen hang and Vic’s was all the neighborhood has to offer, so it became so by default. It decidedly did not become so because it is a good coffee shop. So Vic’s won “best coffee shop.” It ain’t the coffee, it ain’t because it’s the best shop, it’s because somehow the 30-somethings single ants collect there looking for honey.
When in Chicago….
We’re sure that there are awesome indi coffee shops here in the Windy City, but we’re not at one of them right now. We’re parked at Caribou (corner of N Ashland Ave and W School St), which is on the SBC/Peaberry/Pete’s tier-II level of mega coffee chains. Free wi-fi got us in the door. Moving on shortly to find some babes on Southport Ave…. (and when I say babes, I mean the toddler types. This neighborhood outdoes Boulder in toddlers per capita by at least 2:1). Caribou was absurdly loud, with the chiller motors like chainsaws. Go there in a pinch, don’t go as a destination.
Ok, now we’re sitting in the Southport Grocery and Cafe (corner of N Southport and W Addison, not too far from Wrigley Field). Now this place is a find! No wireless in here but there are enough open ports that we’re live. Oh, the Matrix. We also tried Julius Meinl across the street but you have to {gasp!!} pay for that wireless so we walked.
