Author Archives: coffeehouseguy80

Just try not to get run over while taking a picture in the village of East Prospect, Pennsylvania. I dare you. This little town has far more traffic than one would expect, especially given that there’s one main street and…well, not much else. OK so there’s probably a lot else actually, but I hope that my ignorance is quasi-understandable given the hurry I was in. This morning (actually the morning of September 25) was the York Pagan Pride festival, happening eight miles from this tiny burg, and looking quite out of place among the massive number of Bible churches.

Now, yours truly doesn’t follow any single religious ‘path’ per se. In fact, I consider myself an old-fashioned perennialist. That is to say, I support the idea that spiritual and moral truth is universal and thus reason can seek it out, so when multiple religions agree on a tenet, such as the golden rule, they’ve probably latched onto a deeper and more transcendent truth. Yes, this is yet another good idea that gestated in the cafes of the Enlightenment era. And so I find myself often at metaphysical festivals of all stripes, seeking fellow seekers.

But right now I was seeking something else: coffee. East Prospect houses exactly one coffeehouse: Rustic Cup. The cafe is aptly named in the extreme. The road that leads to it from the main drag in town connects only to it, a pizza shop, and a row of houses before ambling off into the rolling hills of York County. The exterior, all wood with a fading sign, didn’t seem out of place. The interior was an amazing departure.

Now, I have a theory regarding small Pennsylvania towns. They all have about a squad’s worth of progressives milling about. There’s the teacher and her husband. The town historian and his wife, the aging hippie couple who may or may not be one of the aforementioned couples, and the half-dozen emo kids, young artistic souls and meandering crust punks who hang out in the alley pretending if only for a moment that it’s somewhere off-Broadway. The owner of this shop, Chris, certainly fits the image of an artistic soul out of place (I would know) But perhaps he’s in exactly the right place. I don’t know, because I don’t know him, but the way he’s positively filled this space with creative work made me want to know him and his vision.

Turns out this is only one stop on his journey. He’s already formulating a plan to move to Red Lion when the building purchase gets settled. The current Rustic Cup is cozy but not cramped. The new place will likely have a rooftop…something. He mentioned something about music that made my ears perk up. Red Lion is closer to Harrisburg which makes me happy/sad because I love home/traveling.

The coffee itself was as innovative as the space it dwells in. The house blend was literally called House Blend and Chris informed me that it was proprietary (I didn’t needle him with more questions even though I wanted to). It tasted…proprietary! I mean, if I had come up with this blend I’d certainly keep it to myself and monetize it. Beautifully balanced is the phrase I’d use here. It was clearly (I say ‘clearly’ while going in blind, mind you) a South American coffee of some sort, having the exceptionally creamy mouthfeel of a good Latin bean. There was also an unmistakable mineral quality to it that I’m still trying to nail down. The coffee itself was roasted to order by Alabaster Coffee Roaster & Tea Company up in Williamsport, PA. Williamsport has been on my list of places to take this tour for some time, so now it looks like I have a definitive target. To Alabaster we go!

And to home, I soon went. The festival was a bit slow and I was all shopped out and hungry. When I got back I encountered the best surprise of the whole outing: My Mom had made me some of her own proprietary turkey noodle soup and just left it there warm for me. How she had known that I was thinking about soup while sitting in two traffic jams on the way into Harrisburg is something which will have to remain a mystery. At least my next coffee stop shouldn’t be a mystery: I’m planning a trip up the Susquehanna to Liverpool.

the signage…

the enticement…

the globe…but flat…

the various arts…

the inordinately hazardous traffic…

The Ragged Edge. This is a blast from the past. I’m taking a bit of a detour from my stated objective of checking out coffeehouses to the north, especially to the west of 11/15. Actually, it’s technically not too much of a detour since the town of Gettysburg is indeed to the west of 11/15. I was in this most famous of towns not to explore its deep/painful/beautiful history, but to attend a yearly bluegrass concert. On the way home, I thought I’d be remiss if I didn’t take in the town itself while I was here. It was then that I recalled The Ragged Edge.

This coffeehouse was one of my first introductions to the art and poetry scene. Let’s dial it back to the heady days of 2002. I was in college at Shippensburg U, experimenting with dangerous, stupid things like postmodernism, and feeling homesick for the city. Unlike my very diverse high school, here you only had a few cultural options. Not being much of a line-tower, I fell in with the poets and goth kids. I still came home a lot, and after one Saturday night at a hangout called The Why’re in New Cumberland, found myself the next weekend at an awesome poetry reading here at Ragged Edge, a longtime epicenter of Southern Pennsylvania’s bohemian culture. It was awesome coming back and walking up the stairs to the exact room where I drank coffee, read poetry, and gawked awkwardly at the elegant brunette who’d been the real draw for me to make the trek that evening. Those were the days.

Oh and I suppose you want to know about the coffee. The coffee here was spectacular. A few of my reviews recently have been a bit ‘meh’ I know, but really, not everyone is going to be a standout. This coffee was, and I’m not just bending for the sake of nostalgia. The mingling of the various citrus and flower flavors didn’t hit me immediately, but when they did it was a nice little symphony. I had to do that slurpy aeration thing with my tongue several times in a row as I walked down the street (looking odd to passersby I assume) just to get the full impact. I swear I caught hints of hibiscus and lime. This was a light-to-medium Ethiopian, and more full-bodied than its stated attributes and source might suggest. Ragged Edge is its own roasting company, and partners with nearby 82 Cafe where it’s prepared. This is all fair trade coffee and apparently it’s sourced in the most direct fashion: the owner of the coffeehouse physically visits the farms. The degree of care is most evident.

I don’t know when I’ll be back in Gettysburg. The next coffeehouses I visit should be somewhere up north as I’d planned. That being said, there’s a beer festival I might go to in Lititz late in the month so there could be a coffeehouse in the works there. I’ve heard that Lititz is one of those up-and-coming small towns in PA, so it might be worth a look. That being said, I do like finding art in unexpected places. Either way, it’s the journey that matters. Until next time, stay caffeinated.

the sunlight…

the seating…

the art room…

art everywhere really…

the garden…

Perry County, Pennsylvania is a land of contradictions. It’s right next to Dauphin County, which is home to the capital city of Harrisburg. It’s also one of Central PA’s most rural counties. The Appalachian Trail runs right through the rolling mountains and dead-quiet backroads that make up most of the county’s land. On the other hand, it’s one of Appalachia’s most economically successful counties, with a growing population and burgeoning arts scene. The young, progressive townsfolk rub elbows with the overwhelmingly conservative farmers of the countryside. The opposites play on each other unselfconsciously, with both sides often crossing the line from archetype to caricature. But the lure of identity is strong in a rootless world, and so Trump stickers and rainbow flags can both be found plastered to the cars lining 4th Street of Newport, PA where Buffalo Brew is located.

In that context, I didn’t know quite what to make of Buffalo Brew. It didn’t seem to take a side in the culture wars, and it this part of the state, that set it apart to the degree that I wanted to learn more about it. After all, the fact that I want to learn instead of shill ideology seems to set me apart these days. Perhaps I’d find a few kindred spirits here. When I walked in, what I found was a very neutral space. There were community bulletins aplenty, but little of the avant-garde art (or attempts at it) that typically crowd the walls of a coffeehouse. The simple tables and chairs could have belonged to an agronomist or an artist. The only kitschy object of note was a toy buffalo sitting on a comfy couch in the corner. Note: Everything around here is buffalo everything. Buffalo Ridge, Little Buffalo Creek, etc. It’s all named after the buffalo that were thought to once roam the area. Evidence seems to come up scarce.

There’s plenty of evidence for a strong coffee culture here in Newport. I counted no less than three on the town square alone, one of them close to Perry County Council of the Arts headquarters. The coffee itself wasn’t too strong; I got the tail-end of the breakfast brew I think. It was a Colombian Sur de Huila coffee, an Arabica bean, and it did have a nice, characteristic nut flavor to it with an airy bit of citrus. The chocolate wasn’t as noticeable to me as the packaging made it out to be, but I’m starting to think I’m the only person who likes a nice chocolate aftertaste to my coffee. That can’t be true, can it?

The muscular gent who sold me the coffee questioned my motives for taking photographs of the place. We live in skeptical times, and people around here are still pretty insular. Rivers have always been highways, but mountains are walls, and we’re surrounded by them up in the center of Perry. I reassured him that it was for blogging purposes only, and the prospect of free advertisement seemed to win him over. On my way out of Newport I almost got lost. I’m thinking that’s a testament to the fact that Newport, although barely registering over 1,500 citizens, is a spot of growth surrounded by townships that are slowly losing their citizens to nearby cities. Like those brand-new Newporters (Newportians?) I came here for a reason. I came here because I need a balance between the city life and the country. Between the liberal and the conservative. Between the political and the apolitical. Between needing art in my life and needing nature. Let’s hope that the center holds in this little town, or that it at least remains a place of many voices. After all, isn’t that what coffeehouse culture is all about? Until next time, stay caffeinated.

the signage…

the view…

the seating…

the beans…

It’s arguable that no man in American history was as committed to the cause of freedom as John Brown. A radical abolitionist who met his end at the end of a hangman’s noose for organizing a daring raid against slaveholders in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. As I drove through Maryland this weekend, rather aimlessly after missing a crucial turnoff on the beltway, I spied the John Brown Coffee sign at a random intersection outside Cockeysville and just had to stop by, even though I was already well-caffeinated by that point.

I have no idea to this day whether the name referenced the hero or another John Brown. The website offered no clue, and as I stood there in the middle of Civil War country, I kind of just assumed. I’m sticking with that assumption because the cause of freedom for all was just one of many ‘radical’ notions discussed in coffeehouses across Europe and beyond during those heady days in which humanity was evolving by leaps and bounds in terms of consciousness. What could be more fitting than a coffeehouse named after the great abolitionist himself?

The cafe itself is beautiful. It’s a brown stone building within a complex of several other brown stone buildings which seem to collectively be part of a park. You order from a window and sit outside at one of several tables, and I could see a few travelers taking advantage of that shady little spot they concocted. Boy is it necessary in a Maryland summer! Apparently they’ve been there since 2017, serving the massive number of tourists who come through on their way to Baltimore and points south.

They also find their beans locally. Well, local-ish. John Brown Coffee gets their coffee from Pipe & Tabor Roasting Company from Germantown, New York. These folks in turn source their actual beans from Red Fox Coffee Merchants, which is known for working closely with local farmers. The particular coffee I ordered was a Kenyan. It absolutely had the citrus quality for which African coffees are known. The floral/fruity was immediately evident when I took a sip before putting the milk in, and that’s not generally my cup of tea (wait, I mean coffee), but you know what? This worked because of the complexity. The floral flavors had a range to them that I’d call a veritable bouquet. I wanted something special and new and I got it. The point of all this is to have an adventure in each cup. Capital job!

I hope that anyone traveling through Maryland gets as lost as I did. You might just run across this little outpost. As for me, I’ll be heading North for my next exploration. Technically northwest. Remember how when I was reviewing Susquehanna Coffee, the land to the west of 11/15 was like another world? I’m going back to that world. Until then, stay caffeinated.

the outside…

the inside…

the…cow?

Welcome back, hypercaffeinated readership. And yes, Google is telling me that hypercaffeinated isn’t a word vis-a-vis the red line of death beneath it. To heck with that. Heck I say! Language evolves for the same reason everything else does. Nature set progress on autopilot billions of years ago, and the only time it stops is when people make the absurd choice to stop it. In the interest of not turning this blog into a liber querulus, I’ll leave that at that.

My home city certainly appears to be evolving. That would be the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This is actually my first time looking for coffee in Harrisburg itself since sometime in 2019. What can I say, sometimes you miss things that are right in your backyard. I almost failed to mention this fact, for some reason assuming that people who read this blog know by now that I’m from there, even though I’ve kind of been everywhere over the course of this project. As I drove down Walnut Street I noticed this new cafe out of the corner of my eye, sitting pretty in a building that had been abandoned during the chaos of 2020. I would later learn that owner Lakshmi Tanniru and business partner Liz Albayero  opened in October of that year. I love when the owners of a coffeehouse are as bold as their brew.

Ms. Albayero clearly strove to bring Latin flair to her little corner of the American dream. As a matter of fact, this is the first Latin-American owned coffee shop in Harrisburg. Although they do have a Salsa night apparently, most of the overt cultural infusion seemed to be reserved for the coffee, and it really shines through in the quality. Yes, my bias is showing. Readers probably know by now that I’m a fan of Latin coffees in particular. You tend to get a not-quite-earthy richness from them, at least in the ones the roaster cared about. The roaster obviously cared here. I learned that the owners source their coffee directly from El Salvador. The blend I had was a Guatemalan-Salvadoran. It was indeed rich but balanced, just like a Central American coffee should be, the flavor (with a near-floral aftertaste) still clearly evident in spite of my adding too much almond milk to the mix. In my defense, I don’t think anyone can actually get almond milk right.

In the end, it seemed I missed the lines. From what was written in a recent article of The Burg magazine, there was a crowd here that early-autumn day when it opened. Like I said, we coffee lovers are a daring sort. May we always be. If you’re in the Burg and need a fix, consider The Fix. People who fight this hard for what they love deserve respect (and patronage). As for me, I’m off to another corner of PA to look for some more prime brew. No hints this time; I’m going where the wind takes me.

the street…

the luxe seating…

the art deco…

the art…

the hamsa…

I’m actually in the middle of nowhere, but you can see it from here. OK, that’s hyperbole. But south of Carlisle, PA it certainly feels like that. It’s where the Appalachian Trail crosses into the Cumberland Valley, and you can see the first of many big green foothills of South Mountain which connects to the rest of the Appalachians stretching from here to Georgia. It feels like you’re ready to travel somewhere, even if you’ve just come for a quick breath of fresh air…or to try some new coffee.

The Java Junky isn’t actually a stand-alone coffee shop. In fact, the owner, Barb, doesn’t stand alone at all. Rather, her store is part of the Carlisle Country Market, which is run as a co-op. There is literally a store in every corner of that market (and there are far more corners than a building of that size would suggest), with most of them containing everything from candy to country artisanry to antiques. If it hadn’t been a very early morning those stores might have been open, in which case I might have left a bit lighter in the wallet. As it stood, I quickly bellied up to the bar for some much needed waking-up.

Now the coffee itself was something interesting as well. It was called Market Street Blend and constituted a mix of Costa Rican and French-roasted Arabica beans. Not a common combo! The roaster (which I think was Lancaster County Coffee Roasters, but Barb left me a mystery there…) is located right in down in Lancaster, which surprised me. It actually shouldn’t have; Carlisle has a nice little underground coffee scene wherein local roasters take center stage. Barb also described herself as extremely picky when it comes to coffee beans. Gave poor Starbucks a tongue-lashing. You know what else hit my tongue right away? That classic Arabica acidity. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll know that Arabica is quite a gamble. It’s more expensive than the common Robusta that makes up the lion’s share of coffee in the US. It has more acidity but it also a more complex profile than less pricey coffees. That means it’s easy to do right and wrong. Barb did it right. Yes, there was a little bitterness but only a little, and it was mellowed out nicely with some buttery smoothness. That’s how you can tell that both the roaster and the brewer actually care.

I’ll be heading out more over the next few weeks. The big question is whether I’ll be going north or south. South is the REI store in Timonium that I have to go to for a backpack fitting. There will be a plethora of coffee in the outskirts of Baltimore. On the other hand, north is where the unique small towns of the Susquehanna valley and Alleghenies lie. I think we’ll agree that there’s something unique about those small town coffeehouses. After all, they have to exist in a place where it’s hard to survive on art. But they do have to exist. I’ll write more on that later. For now, in spite of tremendous odds, Barb and her cohorts keep existing. You’ll be grateful for that if you’re ever heading into the hills in need of some extra energy.

the approach…

the stash…

the sentiment…

the market…

the copious seating…

the obvious…

the mountain beyond…

OK so…do you remember how I said there would be a big announcement coming up? Come on, sure you do, it was on the last post before the last post. Two posts ago. I swear I alluded to something. Anyhow, here is is: I’m starting a new blog. No, I’m not getting rid of this blog. I’m merely starting a second blog on a completely unrelated topic. That unrelated topic is…the paranormal! Last year, something unprecedented happened…the Navy admitted that it chases UFOs. They even released video of them doing it. It should have been the big news of the year. It wasn’t the big news of the year. Stupid nature. Anyhow, that revelation coupled with a lifelong interest in both science and and the vanguards of science inspired me to start a blog showcasing the weirder side of life.

The blog will be called The Mangey Bear. It’s an allusion to a famous photo of a bizarre four-legged creature caught on a trail camera. It looked like a goblin or werewolf, but of course the skeptics declared it to be simply a bear with mange. Of course nobody knows what it really was, as a full investigation was never done. But that’s the point of this new project of mine. People who theorize about the paranormal tend to fall into two camps: There are the believers in everything and the acknowledgers of nothing. In my blog, we’ll look at things from a more rational angle, peeling back the mythology encrusted upon the paranormal, while setting aside the ideology of Skepticism. In other words, we’ll be looking for the truth.

I’ll be starting the blog up sometime in June, and I’ll be sure to let you know here. I’ll also let you know about some more good coffee starting in the middle of May when I have a bit of an expedition planned. Until next time, caffeinated ones.

When is a coffeehouse not a coffeehouse? Well, I’m really not sure. What exactly is the Platonic ideal of the coffeehouse if you had to gather an image to mind? At the start of this blog, I laid out some basics of what I think makes a ‘real’ coffeehouse. Now, I expect to be accused of engaging in a bit of gatekeeping there, but I stand by the idea that ‘the coffeehouse’ is something authentic and specific: both an aesthetic ambience and a perpetuator of the Enlightenment zeitgeist of making art and asking questions. If that’s the case, then Appalachian Mountain Coffee exists in a sort of borderland. The coffeehouse spirit exists here but it exists in potentiality only. A coffeehouse waiting to become.

Perhaps a bit of introduction is in order: I learned that this roasting company existed due to a chance encounter at a small, outdoor market back in August of last year. I wasn’t even looking for coffee at the time, just enjoying the fact that there were people doing a thing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a makeshift stand bearing the name of a coffee roaster I’d never heard of. Now, I’ve been buying coffee for a long time and I thought I knew about every operation there was to know in these parts. I was quite mistaken. It turns out that Appalachian Mountain Coffee is a geographical oddity. Look them up online and you’ll swear that Google Maps is drunk. They’re not in a town or a village or even one of our many ‘census-designated places’ that pockmark the Pennsylvania countryside. Appalachian Mountain Coffee is in a small building on a small hill in the middle of a large, farm-blanked county. A red dot at the end of a long blue directional line that winds west from Port Trevorton on the Susquehanna River, along one-lane roads (yes, one) up into the hills. That’s why I hadn’t heard of them previously, and also what drove me to learn more about them. I felt like I was in on a secret. That, and the fact that their coffee turned out to be utterly phenomenal.

I’m not entirely sure how Merle does it. That’s the name of the owner and mastermind behind the coffee crafting here. As I drove up the long, narrow road to the home that houses both his family and his coffee, I noticed that there was precious little in the way of infrastructure. After greeting me at the door in his overalls, fresh from dinner with the family, he led me to the little store attached to the roasting room (and the dining room) from which he sells his bags of coffee. He assured me with much pride that his operation was entirely off the grid. It is entirely off the grid. Local water, local power, and absolutely no computerization involved in the production process. You have to understand, this is Amish country. People who live here choose to meet modernity on their own terms, not the world’s. Let’s just say that the last year has endowed me with a certain empathy for that position. The quality of his coffee makes a good selling point for his lifestyle as well.

The only coffee that I actually tried in-shop was the nitro cold brew, which was creamy and fantastic even without milk added. It had an almost liqueur-like quality that was sublime. That was the only coffee available in a glass; everything else was sold by the bag, either whole-bean or ground. I got two bags of ground coffee, a Colombian and a Sumatran French Roast. I tried the Colombian when I got home, and it was just as smooth and refined as the cold brew had been. The only mistake I made was not putting enough in the coffee maker; it really is a medium roast and is a bit more subtle than commercial Colombians tend to be. Note that I said subtle, not weak. The lack of punch was no doubt a deliberate price paid for intricacy of aroma. Good choice. The Sumatra really is a very bold dark roast, as he had warned me…though I let him know forthwith that this was a selling point to me, not a warning. The Sumatra looked as black as soil in spring and was every bit as rich. It’s worth noting that you can smell both of these coffees right through the sealed bags; there’s that much abundance of flavor.

As I left (with a few free samples added into my bag by the far-too-generous Merle), I addressed the elephant: the fact that this place isn’t a coffeehouse and few people even know it exists! Well, there is an online presence, run through a friend of his apparently. The cost of coming down to Harrisburg can be prohibitive…but then again, so can the logistics of coming up to this area. That seemed to be the main issue; he expressed a bit of skepticism regarding how likely people would be to come up to his forested little hill amidst the hills just to visit a coffeehouse should he open one. Two things counter that notion: The coffee alone is clearly worth the hour-long trip from southern Dauphin county, but the bucolic beauty of the region in which it sits is the real draw. Remember how central it is to the coffeehouse experience to induce contemplation in people? Places of peace are becoming all too rare in this world. This is one of them. It may not draw all people, but it would draw the right kind of people. Ones who care less about fleeting fashions and trendy locales and more about getting back to the roots of things. Until next time, stay caffeinated.

the home on the hill…

the beans…

the coldbrew…

the accoutrements…

the view…

the long road home…

I have two special treats coming up in the next couple of weeks for my loyal and over-caffeinated readers. Guess what they are. OK, two hints; one for each upcoming ‘thing.’ First, I must beg the question, when is a coffeehouse not a coffeehouse? Second, what *other* blog could I be starting alongside this one in the very near future that involves the theme of wanton exploration? Mull it over, and I’ll see you in about half a moon.

Happy New Year! I’m glad to finally be back on the road. The time around the holidays was rather insane this year and I wanted to beat the mega-rush of people being out and about. After all, going to a place with this name whilst in the midst of chaos would be rather unfortunate. It’s funny, but I never really venture up the eastern bank of the Susquehanna river much, even though I live on it. Maybe that’s the reason; just doesn’t feel as exotic perhaps. As well, despite the fact that there used to be a band here called Take 147 that I used to see all the time, I hadn’t actually taken Route 147 north for years. So that’s what I decided to do this time, and visit the awesome little town of Millersburg, PA.

Millersburg is normally home to a yearly Christmas tree lighting ceremony, a restaurant straight out of a Hallmark romance called The Wooden Nickel and absolutely no coffee. That all changed when Peace of Mind Cafe was started up in November of 2019. For a town this picturesque to be without its own coffeehouse was something I always considered a bit of a tragedy and apparently some other people did as well. Some very hippie people. Yes, as you can in by the photos below, someone is clearly seeing the world through technicolor glasses here. From the wisp of steam creating a peace sign in the logo to the amps and guitar still resting on the makeshift stage almost begging someone to allow them to be played, this venue evokes the Haight-Ashbury feeling quite effectively.

The coffee is a locally sourced organic roast, as befits a conscious establishment like this. It was a Colombian Supremo from a brand called Fresh Roasted, out of nearby Sunbury. This was really interesting; I wouldn’t call it a strong flavor, but it was a good one. Talk about a silky mouthfeel! It was almost too airy and light for my taste, as are most Colombian blends, but that impression only lasted until the subtle flavors kicked in on the back-end of the gulp. There was a fruit-flower taste that didn’t manifest unless you happen to swirl the mixture around in your mouth a bit. In the words of Grand Admiral Thrawn from Star Wars, it was so artfully done. It got a positive response from my Mom even, and that’s no small feat. The only person pickier than a food blogger is a food cooker. Probably why we make a good taste testing team! Anyhow, this lovely breakfast blend deserves another swig the next time I’m up this way scouting for local java.

You know, I don’t think we talk enough here about the whole ‘local’ thing and how important it is. Shopping locally isn’t just something you should do to virtue-signal your concern for the world at large. I mean, sure, posing with a photo of yourself helping local farmers is a snappy alternative to having actual empathy if you’re a narcissistic Instagrammer. But the food is also good. Don’t forget that part; the product is simply better, at least in the case of food, when care is taken…and care can’t be taken in an economy of scale. So scale down and source your coffee and concomitant consumables from producers who have a stake in the things they make.

So begins my new task over the next few months of exploring cafes. I’m looking to stick to some of the farm-laden valleys that branch off from the Susquehanna Valley to the east and west. Typically there’s a creek in those valleys and along that creek is typically a town or three of some sort. Coffeehouse culture is being rediscovered and reimagined in some unexpected places. Really, anywhere that there’s a culture of art there’s often a culture of coffee. It’s a common truism among smarty-pantses that correlation is not causality. I do believe that art and coffee are an exception to this, and it isn’t just caffeine in the brainpan driving it. It’s an association between the historically-favored drink of deep thinkers and those who need to know that there are others like them out there. Every town has people like us. The coffeehouse brings us together.

So if you do what I failed to for so long and take good old 147, stop by this cafe for a quick perk-up and hopefully leave with a little more peace of mind.

the front…

the signage…

the state of mind…

the homages…

the seating…