Coffee Cult Creations - For the Love of Over the Counter Culture

As I waited for her 4shot-venti-non-fat-caramel-machiatto, I had time to reflect on coffee culture and what it invariably means to me as I inhaled the filtered-through-dirty-sock aroma of burnt java beans. Walking away from a $tarbuck$ with an armload of overpriced yuppie puppy juice is becoming somewhat of a specialty. You see, when office orders start to circulate across the floor like a caffeinated cockroach - I’m among the first to volunteer for the trip to lubricate my escape from the workplace - get some fresh air in my lazy lungs; feel free for a fleeting moment or two before heading back into the blue tube of recycled air and idle chit-chat. There are coffee services in the building, a Canadian institution operates downstairs in fact, but there’s something about a large white cup of steaming half-caf-beaver-slapped-whatever-chino to bring joy to a puffy eyed co-worker on a cool Friday afternoon.

When we were taut teenagers, coffee houses were the only places where minors could hang out and smoke lung buttering cigarettes on those solid white nights of winter. We would stay up most of the night in some dingy place, sipping at the poorly rendered black beverage - talk smack about the chicklettes we felt up behind the gym, inflate our dreams with youthful imagination and pollute our lungs with the smoldering suicide sticks. We felt like taxi drivers or something equally “romantic” to the mind of a young man - we were perfectly at home in the ancient lyric of a classic Tom Waits song.

I think it all went south when these monstrous coffee conglomerates took over the world one city block at a time. It’s astonishing to me that the public hunger for caffeine is so great that it can facilitate the need to have so many shops within such close proximity - like Lego blocks, swollen corpses or rabid rodents piled high atop one another. You know it’s bad when the biggest competitor one store has is an identical outlet just a ¼ block down and one single floor up.

I laugh a little at myself as I cart my armload of caffeinated creations past the line up of suits and wonder how the hell I became one of them. If I had another hand I would’ve slapped myself. I blame YOU Chandler Bing!

iPod played "Nashville Pussy - Fried Chicken & Coffee" while posting