Brewing Mkt out on 95th
I had posted some reviews and news about The Curious Cup, most recent being that they died. While praising CC, I was basting their 95th and Arapahoe competition, Brewing Market. Well Brewing Market is still in business and CC isn’t, so I decided that I should probably suck it up and go work there for an afternoon.
Since I now live out that direction and I don’t want to come into Boulder every day, I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised by Brewing Market on 95th so I could use it as a reliable satellite office. I was and I wasn’t.
First the good: the layout I like. Tables on one end with ample elbow room between them and a mix of table sizes. On the other end is a U-shaped couch and plush chair area that works well. You can work there, but it is more a comfortable meeting spot, and there were two different groups of people having coffee meetings while I was there. The entire east wall and much of the north wall is floor-to-ceiling glass which I think is a good orientation since you don’t get afternoon sun barreling down on you and your laptop.
Now the bad: Brewing Market is still Brewing Market. The coffee sucks and the chai is even worse (hard to think that’s possible, but I confirmed that it is). The internet policy is that you get access for two hours per order. I can see the business logic behind it, but it’s shortsighted. Unless your shop is packed to the gills with laptop zombies all day (ie., Saxy’s), you don’t need to worry about the occasional person who orders one drink and works for 6 hours. To the rest of the people it’s a turn-off.
It’s too bad that CC went down the loser and Brewing Market stayed around the winner, but for a workspace it is decent. Just don’t plan on loving your coffee. If you live in the vicinity, it works.
Downtown shop poll results
We forgot to post this when it appeared in April. Downtown Boulder Magazine posted the results of a poll (page 37 of the pdf) about the best downtown coffee shop (presumably from this list of 18 shops). (We posted during the poll’s run).
Here are the results (actual screenshot from the magazine pdf is below the fold, but we had the full results emailed to us), and I have to say I’m scratching my head on a couple of these:
1. The Cup (18%)
2. The Unseen Bean (15%)
3. Laughing Goat (10%)
4. Great Awakening (8%)
5. Tee and Cakes (7.5%)
6. Amante (7%)
7. Trident (6%)
I’m good with the top-3, but Great Awakening? Are you kidding? And Saxy’s or Sidney’s didn’t make the list? And while I like Tee and Cakes, Spruce Confections is roughly 346 times better. One of three explanations are possible: 1) all of 14 people responded; 2) Readers of Downtown Boulder mag are not representative of actual coffee shop denizens; 3) ballot-box stuffing. Either way, more grist for the mill that public polls like this are next to useless, which is exactly what one of our commenters noted on the post announcing the poll.
We found the quiet shop you’ve been looking for
And it was right downtown the whole time. It’s been there for about a year now. Ku Cha House of Tea is on 13th between Pearl and Spruce and get this — IT DOESN’T HAVE WIRELESS!!! Ok, some might consider this sacrilegious in Boulder, but I know many of you are going to consider it a godsend antidote to the laptop libraries sprouting up all over town in otherwise fine shops such as Folsom St., The Cup and Saxy’s.
Ku Cha is a combo retail tea shop — selling around a hundred different loose-leaf teas and steepware — and a ‘traditional’ tea house with a sublimely relaxing atmosphere. No laptops in sight, just a soothing lounge where you can write in your little notebook, read the newspaper, or just stare at the ceiling without being bombarded by the obnoxiously loud noise music of the Goat. The quiet, laptop-free atmosphere also means the Ku Cha is generally empty. Good for people seeking refuge, bad for the shop. Helpfully they are doing well enough to stay in business because Boulder certainly needs some quiet spots, especially since the demise of Tea Spot.
Another shop on the blocks
The venerable Tea Spot has a sign up on the cash register announcing their demise. Sad. The location is a bit awkward. You’d think the ice rink plaza would get more foot traffic but it’s just enough out of the way to be relatively unvisited. The Tea Spot sign says that the owners are doing well in their wholesaling business so that’s where they’ll focus their efforts from here forward, the end of the lease being a good time for them to pull away from the retail shop. New owners could jump in on favorable lease terms (seems like business leases are going ridiculously cheap in Boulder right now) and an already-completed buildout.
So where does that leave the Boulder coffee shop scene?
- Amante for sale
- Playgrounds for sale (and closed until somebody buys it)
- Organica folded about 6-9 months ago
- Sidney’s just sold
- Tea Spot closing
Who is doing well? The obvious ones (meaning they’re always full):
- Amante NoBo
- Folsom St. Coffee
- Laughing Goat
- Logan’s (full all day though?)
- The Cup
- Saxy’s (but see recent post decrying the “success“)
- Starbucks (hahaha) … actually, only the Hill location seems to be consistently busy
- Vic’s (Ideal)
Boulder needs more coffee shops
I never thought I’d ever catch myself saying this, especially after starting to tally all the Boulder shops last year and stopping after we passed 40. But on a Monday afternoon, a holiday, I can’t get a seat anywhere. 2PM, random afternoon, a sunny 65F in the middle of January, and instead of hiking everybody has decided to shack up inside Boulder coffee shops?
Let this also serve as a WTF?? for Saxy’s. When it opened it was an awesome shop. Maybe because it felt manageable. Now? Of the last three times I’ve stopped by the place has been shoulder-to-shoulder with diligent MacBook slaves, all staring unblinkingly into their life-suck devices (full disclosure: I’m blogging right now from a MacBook, at a coffee shop, so there). Every seat taken, every person on a laptop. Saxy’s now wins the award for most lifeless shop atmosphere. Seriously, it feels like an Ivy League library during finals in there, and of the last three times I’ve tried, I’ve immediately walked out and found another place to drink and chill. Somehow the cognoscenti of Boulder “found” Saxy’s. Please people, unfind it. It was such a nice shop before it got taken over by the Borg. (FWIW, this was written about back in August 2007 and it’s only gotten worse.)
good for the owner, bad for morale?
As in all things, balance is good. The owner wants money. The patron wants a nice quiet, mellow coffee shop to sit back, relax, and maybe throw down a few sets of power law computations on the ol’ laptop over a warm sippy sippy. Lots of money means lots of patrons and by that measure, Saxy’s should be very, very happy. Their rent is undoubtedly being paid. But seriously, I think it’s coming at the expense of patron comfort. The patron (generally) wants quiet-to-moderate-quiet, which means few people. Somehow Saxy’s became flypaper to Boulder’s laptop-toting community. I couldn’t hear myself think in there today, much less feel comfortable at my seat wedged in elbow-to-elbow with two strangers on my right and left. A decision was then made. [Insert thought balloon over my head] “I bet Espressoria is totally empty….”
And it was.
Le Tour 2007
Amante has been hyping it up for weeks and finally it’s upon us, the Tour De France 2007. Both Amante and Saxy’s are showing the live cast and replays throughout the day. With 20 stages playing from the 7th to the 29th of July, there’ll be plenty of opportunity to get your cycling fix.
So if you’re looking for a good distraction and what’s sure to be another entertaining Tour, hit one of these favorites.
and then an argument ensued….
there was a beer meeting last night at the West End. one thing led to another. coffee came up. Vic’s came up. this author stood her/his (this is an anon blog after all) ground and bashed Vic’s vociferously. it became a two-on-two, with two calling Vic’s coffee bitter and sour and nasty and the other two raving about it, saying it was by far the best in town. But see, those other two so-and-so’s don’t have login access (yet). So I get the last word. And the last word is that Conscious Coffees (served at The Cup and Sidney’s and The Kitchen and probably some other joints) makes the Vic’s-served Allegro taste like black play-doh. So there. But I’m happy to register publicly that Vic’s has it’s strong supporters. But I would be remiss in not reminding our loyal readers that Vic’s screwed up bad and we haven’t been back since. And the Ideal Vic’s doesn’t turn on the wireless until 11am to discourage people like, well, us!, from working there in the morning.
Despite the acrimony over Vic’s, consensus was among the four that Saxy’s wins the reader’s choice award. Maybe not the best coffee (according to the Vic’s lovers), but definitely all around the best place in town. Now if they’d only lower the prices a tidge….
Saxy’s wins us over
Okay, ya’ll. After two or three or four or five months of Saxy’s, I’m pretty much a convert. They still don’t offer any organic yummies, but they do have the Italian thing down (of course the Italians, founders of Slow Food movement with the French, are all about organic). It’s comfortable, clean, and best of all the staff are all lovely in and out, stylish, they never give me free drinks (and as per my prior comment, I don’t deserve them) and they have plugs galore for the laptop set, of which I’m one of the Founding Fathers & Mothers. I still feel bad for Ye Olde Trident whenever I spend my elephant-earned dollarz at Saxy’s–but not that bad. They’re doing a great job, and I officially support ‘em as a great local indie business (that was another thing wrong about my last post–they’re from Aspen, not Vail, a far more eco-savvy town, and they have longtime Boulder roots). So maybe the frilly couches, chandeliers and neo-tin ceilings are a tad tacky–but now they seem more elegant, fun–it all makes me feel at home. And that, strangely, is what we want in a cafe.
the tourney is on at Saxy’s
enough said. if you haven’t been here, Saxy’s has a huge plasma TV on one wall.
