A Sleepy Dog Staying Awake in Alaska
I spent a month in Alaska about 10 years ago, and half the month was spent in a cozy little coffee shop called Sleepy Dog Coffee Co. Sleepy Dog was a cozy little cafe situated in a strip mall in Eagle River, the small town outside of Anchorage where my mom had recently moved to live with her sister. Though I’m not entirely certain, I believe the coffee shop’s owners roasted their own coffee; I do know, however, that they shipped their beans to tourists’ homes “outside”. (Alaskans tend to refer to their own vacations to other states as “stepping outside”.)
I spent most of my days parked at the Macintosh computer they had set up in the shop for their customers, sipping my brew and surfing the web. At the time, I was mesmerized by the Internet and was gradually cultivating my addiction to the Mac platform, having left my first Apple–a Performa–back home in California, with little to comfort me besides this near-daily visit with the Sleepy Dog Mac. In fact, I spent so much time in that coffee shop that my mom purchased me a Sleepy Dog souvenir sweatshirt as a parting gift for my return “outside”.
This little coffee shop still stands out in my mind as offering one of the best cups of joe I’ve ever had, a sentiment due in no small part to the warm reception I received from the cafe’s owners and their staff, as well as their impeccable taste in computing platforms. For though I don’t completely recall the taste of the cups of brew I imbibed at Sleep Dog, I remember the pleasure I received sipping from those cups while perched behind that monitor, spying on the local Alaskans as they drifted in and out of the cafe on the mild summer days of July.
At the time, I felt guilty for having spent so much time in that shop rather than at home with mom–where I probably would have spent too much time watching t.v., allowing annoyance to build at the discomforts produced from sharing the house with the family of grifters my aunt was harboring at the time. (Did I say grifters? I’m sure I meant drifters…) Yet looking back now, I’m beginning to think Sleepy Dog was one of the best opportunities I had to get to know one small corner of Alaska. The little shop gave me a destination to walk to every day, an opportunity to take in some fresh air, and the possibility of meeting new people–familar rituals, yet in an unfamilar and great land.
cravings
What I wouldn’t give right now for a Regular Milky Way from Cup O’ Joe in German Village right now.
Isn’t it amazing how coffee can take us back to the best of memories?
House Coffee
I wander into UnUrban, a coffeehouse in an artsy business district on Pico in West Los Angeles, California. Housed in a…well…house, UnUrban is one of those comfy places you can camp out all day, napping on a well-worn couch or drawing from the reading library when you’re bored and alone. When others are present, the coffeehouse has a variety of activities one can participate in: roleplaying in the gaming area…sipping an espresso while enjoying a variety of staged entertainment…soliciting feedback on that Great American Novel you’ve been working on…
For a few years now, I’ve fantasized about running a place like UnUrban, or like Caffe Pergolesi in Santa Cruz, California: a large Victorian house with creaky wooden floors and lots of space to wander while enjoying that hot-yet-mild-tasting morning brew, served in a tall glass mug. I can see it now: me in a bathrobe, deejaying some chill downtempo electronica, perhaps simultaneously broadcasting it to the web. I’d have to be in charge of the music; there’s nothing more disturbing in a cafe than poorly-chosen tunes. Don’t worry, though, I have good taste–except sometimes I make the coffee too strong. Still, you’ll get your money’s worth in my coffeehouse; if the coffee’s too strong (or not strong enough), I’ll fix it up right for you, on the house (and in the house).
Coffee House at Home
So maybe you’re Jonesing for a nice iced coffee but you can’t drop everything and go to the coffee house right now (or, God forbid, there isn’t a good coffee house in your town). Or maybe you’re just looking for some different ways to drink coffee, brew coffee or cook with coffee.
Look no further than I Need Coffee a great little site with a wide array of recipes for things from coffee milkshakes to espresso pumpkin pie, coffee ice cream to espresso martinis. You’ll find out how to make Mexican coffee, Hungarian coffee and home-brewed espresso as well as find recipes to try for all sorts of baked goods (and even pepper steak with coffee).
If you’re looking for something fun and different to do with your brew, check this site out. At the very least it will make you thirsty (and hungry!)
Blowin’ in the Wind
Lots of people don’t like Starbuck for lots of different reasons. They come in to town and force indpendents out, they contribute to the McDonald’s-ification of the world, so no matter where you are you can be assured you can get a Big Mac and a Mochaccino, they don’t do enough as corporate citizens to ensure fair wages of coffee growers or that coffee is produced in environmentally sound ways.
All that may be true, but this week Starbucks made a step in the direction of doing better for the environment by pledging to buy “green tags” in the amount of energy used by five percent of its stores to go toward production of wind power (for the full story, check out The P-I). They aren’t actually buying the energy, they’re buying the production of energy, in the form of 11 windmills. This will cut the company’s greenhouse emissions by two percent and put the company in the top 25 percent of alternative energy consumers in the country.
Which tells you one thing: there ain’t a lot of big companies buying into alternative energy if five percent of Starbucks makes them the top 25 percent of users.
I don’t guess this really has anything to do with the coffee house experience, but it is nice to see a big company make a small effort toward helping the planet.
Remembrance of Coffees Past
My friend Peter used to work at this coffee shop tucked away in the corner of a strip mall. It was pretty small and dark, with black tile and a black ceiling, dark tables and a few comfy couches and chairs in the back. There were the requisite old games of Scrabble and chess, and the tiny place for acoustic bands to set up or poets to read.
There was good food and great drinks at this place. Drinks we still remember fondly and wish we could have again.
OK, really one kind of drink: the coffee milk shakes. This place had the most amazing and jolt-inducing milk shakes in vanilla and chocolate. I’m sure they were horrible for you, but they tasted like a piece of paradise.
This place was mostly open when I was in high school, and it was far from my house so I didn’t get to hang out there much, but I still remember those drinks. I had one the night my brother and his girlfriend played there, and my dad cried, I don’t know why, maybe because he finally saw my brother was doing something with his life and it was good. There was another night when a friend of mine was seducing an older boy, only to desert him later in the night and leave him with me, who he was completely uninterested in. Sweet memories all because of that delicious drink.
I don’t know why the place closed. I’d like to blame Starbucks, but the only one of those we have is inside Barnes & Noble. Still, Java Straight is a big part of my high school memories, and those crack-like drinks will always have a special place in my gustatory memory.
Starbucks Delocator
In a recent post on boingboing.net they talked about delocator.net, or the Starbucks Delocator. What I thought was rather intrigiuing about this story is the somewhat rare convergance of several seemingly unrelated topics; coffee (and where to get good coffee), the intellectual property dispute and just how far those rights go, and search engine optimization.
So the short story of the Starbucks Delocator is this. Man (or the San Francisco Art Institute) creates website ( and art exhibit) whose sole purpose is to locate independent coffee houses (or de-locate starbucks as it were). But for fear of getting sued into oblivion (Edit: on the part of the exhibit hall/Edit ), they don’t use starbucks in the site name. But whats the point if you can’t find it in google?? So woman (Carrie McLaren) starts grass-roots linking campaign to get people to link to it by its real name: Starbucks Delocator to address that situation.
Who knows if the campaign will work (a cool idea either way), but a good way to find a good independent coffee house to support whether at home or exploring a new city.
So as Cory said, “Now, get your link on!” Starbucks Delocator
Bauhaus Coffee & Books, Seattle
In Seattle, home of Starbucks, the relatively benign corporate giant of coffee retailers, indie coffee houses exist in plentitude. Unlike Starbucks, which nicely, craftily puts all but the chair under your butt for sale, and maybe that too soon, indie coffee houses exist for more than your drip or expresso or CD dollar. Those who work at indies take an active hand in every aspect of what you see and experience. The music in the air, be it something mellow like Coltrane, or something more raunchy like Sleater-Kinney or Radiohead, was picked out by the guy or gal behind the counter from his or her own collection. The art on the walls is a local’s, probably the owner’s puffin’ buddy, and the furniture was likely got at tag sales and thrift shops. The wi-fi connection for your laptop is free, unlike Starbucks’ T-Mobile charge-per-hour, and sometimes there are even ‘net computers sitting on a counter, free for use for limited times or unlimited times.
Starbucks wants you to buy product, enjoy the “coffee house atmosphere” they have pieced together, and leave, to come again when you are thirsty to spend more money. Indie coffee houses thrive on people coming, getting their coffee, and sticking around, peopling the place awhile, giving it its rare vibe, building up its rep. Some may not see the difference if they are looking casually–and there are smaller towns where if not for the local Starbucks, there’d be no coffeehouse at all (I recently lived for a year in such a place, glad it was there, yet knowing there is better to be had elsewhere). If you simply want decent coffee product and reasonably good edibles, and some place to read the paper during a lunch break, go to Starbucks. Buy a coffee and a muffin and a CD of Norah Jones’ favorite songs. In Seattle you can even make a CD yourself of the songs you hear on the store speakers (music listening stations with CD burners is Starbucks’ newest innovation, along with producing albums such as Ray Charles’ Genius Loves Company). If you want something more, read on.
I live a few blocks from my favorite coffeehouse, Bauhaus Books & Coffee, been around about a dozen years, and as un-Starbucks-y as they come. Located in Seattle’s funky artsy gay-friendly Capitol Hill, the Bauhaus is a two-level punk monstrosity with high windows fronting two streets. One wall is covered top to toe in bookcases, with a rolling ladder to get at even the highest of them. The music can be loud, the place can get crowded, the number of people with laptops can get befuddling. The Space Needle and I-5 are both within viewing from the place’s mezzanine, where I like to sit. It feels like being on the deck of a ship, looking off into the spaces of the city and beyond. Bauhaus has a standard menu of coffee drinks, and some local donuts that will rock your sugar tooth hard. Its staff are friendly and strange and ready to trade a smile and a word with you. The men’s bathroom is a grafittied brick wall cave, beats the hell out of sterile Starbucks where you often need a code simply to use it. I go to Bauhaus with my lovely partner and when it’s not too loud she can enjoy the groove there.
For all I say here, I’m not sure why I like it so much. Maybe it’s the mezzanine, and being able to hide from the world while seeing a goodly piece of it. I’ve not sat at the outside tables too much. Once, years ago, during a different time of life when I was living here, I hung out there in the summer cool. Dude having a birthday, his friends all singing to him. I think I worked him into a poem I was writing. Something about praise and drowning.
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