When we decided to visit New York, friends told me on how we’d enjoy stopping at the ever-present local coffee shops as we walked the streets of Manhattan. Truth is, we had to really search to find coffee places in Midtown. Sure, there was a Starbucks on nearly every block, but locally owned coffee shops had all but disappeared. We did manage to find them, but sadly, only a few.

Despite the fact that my taste in coffee is newly developed, I’ve come to realize that I don’t like Starbucks coffee. Sure, their $5 concoctions are delightful, but their straight coffee as well as espresso is, well, not very good (in my opinion). On this last trip I vowed to taste better coffee and although a difficult task, finally found it…

* dwelling in the haute-bean atmosphere of Burdick’s in Cambridge,
* hiding in the flavor of Vermont’s Cool Beans Gourmet Coffee sipped in a restored mill in Keene, NH,
* brewing for the enjoyment of the students and good citizens of Keene at Brewbaker’s Coffee Bar,
* savoring nicely within the roasted-on-site coffees of Keene’s Prime Roast coffee house,
* and quietly lurking out of Starbucks’ radar in the brews of the Trident Bookstore & Cafe in Boston (pix below).

Even the simple, but busy, neighborhood plain-name coffee shop at the north end of Central Park in New York where we parked our exhausted selves one afternoon had better tasting coffee than anything I’ve ever had at Starbucks (excluding the White Chocolate Mocha number, of course!).

Truth is, from my perspective, Starbucks has sold America on itself like every other mega-corporation does in this country. It didn’t become the king of beans by offering a good cup o’ joe at a great price (although a friend tells me the original pre-franchise Seattle Starbucks tasted much better than the over-burnt, over-priced mud they serve now); it didn’t buy out and push out the corner coffee shops by being a better thing. No, Starbucks has steamrolled its way around our world based on sheer corporatemanship, clever branding, and positioning itself as the place to be. Some of you, I realize, may defend Starbucks and think their coffee is good, but if so I have to question whether that opinion is based on drinking their coffee normally or under the influence of latteing, frappuccinoing, or mocha-malting your way through their menu. One could brew a pot of Maxwell House (considered fairly bad coffee by most) and dump in cream, sugared flavoring, then top with caramel syrup, whipped cream, and sprinkles and I think you’d taste nearly the same thing.

In the end it’s a matter of personal taste, so I won’t begrudge anyone who thinks Starbucks is the best coffee (or even argues that it’s good coffee). But I will argue that their fast-dance across America (and internationally) while plowing under what used to be a colorful and diverse selection of local coffee shops is just plain wrong. But then, what Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Barnes & Noble, et al, does is just plain wrong too…not that anyone is paying attention to the disappearance of retail diversity, of course.

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Although I’ve always preferred the purifying benefits of water-soaked leaves over burnt beans, I’ve recently become a traitor to my own cause. I have become a coffee drinker almost to the rabidity of my former tea habit. It’s not that I’ve lost the tea taste, but grew tired of fighting the battle to have decent tea in places without dragging either my own tea or tea-making tools. Coffee is more the beverage of convenience, and I guess I should blame the Starbucks empire for getting me hooked on their over-roasted, over-priced, over-rated products. Around here they are the only coffee house, but I do enjoy the coffee-house ambiance for everything from reading to writing to all things online.

My first foray into coffee was interesting. I’d try coffee now and then over the years, loving the brewing odors but hating the oily, bitter taste. I began as newbies usually do my having a little coffee in my hazelnut-flavored cup of half and half, gradually increasing the coffee ratio until even a veteran coffee drinker could tell there was coffee in there. The first few cups gave me quite the buzz. Although tea has a good deal of caffeine in it, for whatever reason the caffeine in coffee affects me differently. I’ve heard from coffee purists that tea does that for them, so perhaps it’s just a subtle difference in the chemicals that causes the increase when switching.

Now coffee has become my drug of choice, and I tend to drink it early in the morning and as an after-work relaxer. I still drink tea, and it’s ironic that I now go through a ceremonial process of sort when making tea that I didn’t used to take time for. Maybe I feel guilty having changed allegiances and in some odd way I feel it necessary to pay homage to my old idol. Whatever the reason, I fill my tea kettle with filtered water and while it boils I fill the tea pot with hot-as-can water to prewarm it and keep the brew hotter, longer. After seeping the leaves, I use a tea cozy to keep the pot warm until I’ve exhausted its contents. The process feels good, and slows life down as preparing tea should. While I don’t add the pauses in the process for reflection as any good tea ceremony would have, I do notice that there’s a calming effect in the making of tea that adds to the enjoyment. Coffee seems to be a drink for people in a hurry, while I think of tea drinkers as those who choose to step off this crazily spinning planet for a few moments to reflect within while sipping tea. I guess each approach has its place in our lives and times when they both make sense. I’ll continue on my bad coffee habits as they seem needed at the moment, but will hope for a day when my pace of life will make slowing down to enjoy a fine cup of Mighty Leaf tea the better choice.

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One of my daily reads, moleskinerie, has an article today on The Sound of Paper. After reading that, I realized that a writer not only deals constantly with sound during the process, but some of these audile distractions can be like comfort foods to someone under the weather. I find it somewhat relaxing to write to the steady cadence of my fountain pen scratching across paper, much more so than the staccati fits of keyboards keys that seem to resist my true intentions. During particularly intense writing sessions, the sound of my breathing strangely blends with the pen scratches to merge into a strange symbiotic relationship. At times that mini-symphony is distracting enough to lose the purpose of the moment.

Since I spend a good deal of time writing at places like Starbucks (admittedly more for their wifi connection than their burnt coffee, but the maple oat scones are killer…), ambient white sound seems to help me write as well. For whatever reason, the music, rustle of patron’s papers, mixed conversations that blend into a rhythmic track, and the occasional sounds from behind the counter all combine to provide a rich background upon which I seem to be able to focus and concentrate. Can’t quite explain it, except to say that it works well for me when writing blog entries and other light works (business writing works well there too, but then, that’s autopilot writing). The scant few times I work on the novel, however, I seem to need a more perfect quiet that’s harder to find. Maybe I feel that serious writing requires structure, whereas more conversational work evolves nicely under the coziness of a blanket of masking sounds.

I have a dream to travel and write, but more specifically, to write a major piece solely in coffee shops/caf

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Don’t get me wrong, I love the quiet and stillness of early morning, especially the chance for some inner reflection and maybe even a little journaling before the intellectual pollution of the day begins in earnest, as it does every day on my commute to work. Part of me would enjoy shifting my work day to begin and end earlier. I had a friend long ago who worked a 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift as a systems analyst (before it was popular to do so). I thought he was crazy getting up that early but was always jealous that he had 2-3 hours after work to run errands while stores were still open.

I used to respond to this new insanity by starting with a hearty breakfast followed by some serious time wrapped in a blanket cuddled in my reading chair for a dreamy post-breakfast nap (don’t laugh, read here about the benefits of napping). THAT was pure decadence, something I thought inaccessible for the hoi-polloi. Lately though, I’m finding I don’t luxuriate with sleep as much as I spend the time catching up with online reading. Nap time has become laptop time.

As we age the common belief is that our bodies will need less sleep. I can’t tell whether I’ve reached that stage or it’s the affect of my new coffee addiction that’s fueling the expansion of my waking hours. Whatever the reason, I intend to try and make the most of it and and at least catch up on my musings here, if nothing else. Besides, if the muse fails me I can always doze off in a blissful post-breakfast stupor.

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