COFFEE IS GOOD.

Coffee is good, very good. I like to start my day off with a nice hot cup of coffee. When I don’t make it myself at home, I try to patronage a small café and give them my business. When I was in college, café’s were all the rage – popping up everywhere on campus. There was this one small place I used to go called The Brazillia Café - on High Street. It’s long gone now, but in it’s day it was the gold standard for small biz coffee shop hang-outs. In that café I wrote my first book called ‘Coffea House Poetry’ (I miss-spelled coffee! On accident! We didn’t have SPELLCHECK back then), and I published it at KINKOS. It was a collection of bad poems written by two guys on way too much caffeine, and with too much time to kill. I am forever comparing coffee shops to the Brazillia Café. But there are few Ma and Pa operations around where I live now (at least none I’ve discovered). Luckily there is always a Starbucks around when you need one.

The thing about having a Starbucks on every corner is that you can always count on the quality of the cup of coffee as being consistent (at least). I lived in Los Angeles for many years and would find myself in Starbucks when ‘jonesing’ for a cup of Joe. And it was satisfying, don't get me wrong. They have a very tasty Soy Latte' (no foam - foam gives you less soy). But I always felt guilty for paying into a huge corporation. Anyway, I flew out to New York City on a film gig and ended up going to a Starbucks with my friend Jorge'. When I ordered my ‘Grande' Soy Latte' with no foam’ his eyes about popped out of his head. He told me it must be a ‘L.A. thing’. I'll tell you this; that Starbucks was thousands of miles away from Los Angeles and that hot beverage tasted just like the one I would get on Melrose down the street from the Golden Apple Comic book shop. That is consistency. That is big business. That is an example of Starbucks being the Mc Donald’s of hot coffee.

(If I were a more savvy blogger I would include links to various coffee info websites here, giving lots of fun facts about roasting the bean and proper brewing techniques, but I’m too new at this and have an antiquated OS on my i-Mac.)

I haven't found that really great PLACE to have a cup of coffee yet (in Columbus, Ohio). I'm still comparing every coffee place to that ghost from my past; The Brazillia Cafe', but none have come close. No ‘Ma and Pa’ operations have really captured me as a regular, but I’m still looking. Some smaller corporations are on the right track, Caribou' Coffee, Scottie Mac Beans and Stauff’s being some of them (in Los Angeles there is a company called Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf that’s always exemplary). What’s good about Scottie Mac Beans and Stauff’s is that the coffee is roasted on site. You get the coffee right outta the oven. How cool is that? With the right beanroaster the effect on your coffee is extraordinary!

That, as they say, is a story for another blog.

Chip K.