There’s something sweet to appreciate about coffee shop cafés. Most smell the same wherever you find them—teeming with that roasted bean scent that floods your nostrils, dancing little salivating jigs across your tongue as you anticipate the earthen flavor that sits in your future. That smell—one that means a whole a lot more than just coffee being served. Perhaps to some, it signifies a quick drive-through cup of Americano, extra shot of espresso tossed over the top. To others, it might be what gets their eyes to open a normal width every morning, regardless of the musk. As my favorite old doc from Scrubs likes to say, “Piping hot coffee that puts a hop in your step and your ass in the john!”
To me, coffee shops are a nexus of everything—a wonderful spot to grab a hot cup of bean water, a breeding ground for tempting and tantalizing ideas, a background for my tapping keys, and a somewhat perfect environment to exercise forward progress. I tend to overstay welcomes (if that’s even possible in a coffee shop), outlast every person that was sitting when I got there, and walk out with refreshed perspectives. I order my coffee black, iced, a cup filled with energizer swirling in muse. Maybe I just order it iced right now because it’s August, and “piping hot coffee” would only make me sweat a little.
Coffee shops are a brilliant display of the social roast. A bean flavor that performs out the inner most habits of a community. If you want to get a lay of the land, see the interaction of the people who surround you, find the place they get their morning joe—it won’t take long before the picture paints itself.
A Cottonwood Coffee House
There is a shop in Utah, near where I used to live, by the name of Beans and Brews. It’s a comfy little establishment, with a low burnt shade of lighting. There are booths along the two side walls, with rising wooden separators in between. Several couches, tables, and chairs scatter the middle of the room—although I’ve never seen anyone use them. Beyond the lobby where business is conducted, there’s a patio with heavy slats of wood spaced a foot-and-a-half apart as the roof. This intimate section is surrounded by eight-foot hedges cuddling up the area with leafy-green walls.
Around the corner from the patio, there’s an assortment of hexagonal picnic tables with holes in the middle for management to slide umbrellas into. Although they rarely do. Those tables rest easy on the eastern side of the coffee house, so I always wondered why those umbrellas weren’t getting hoisted up every morning, as the summer sun peers over the Salt Lake mountain tops. It’s on this side of the building that I normally would sit, opting to spend my time at a certain table that was perfectly positioned under the shade of a massive tree that had all it’s bark sheered off.
At this café, everyone kept to themselves. They would enter and exit the building the same way they had a hundred-and-fifty times before, and they were treated the same way every morning. Everyone came and went as if it was the first time they had ever waltzed into the establishment. The employees working behind the counter would treat everyone as if they hadn’t seen them on every morning over the last eight months. There were little familiar smiles, and the occasional head nod—but on the whole, everyone ordered their same fare, sat in their same booth or table, and rummaged around doing their same routines.
My order was always the same. Can I get a medium, iced, black coffee, please? Sometimes I would switch up the order. Iced, medium, black coffee. Black, iced, medium coffee? I never could land on a cadence that would stick, and when the employees would repeat back my order, they’d switch the words all around too. It was a fun little experiment that played out every morning. A fun experiment that had no hypothesis, no end goal other than to get that dark sixteen ounce cup into my hand so I could snag my outside, eastern front table under the bark-less tree.
I often would bring my dog with me, tying her up to the leg of my bench. She would wander a little, sniffing around at various litter and leaves. After countless mornings sitting on the bench, I can’t recall very many moments of gesture or conversation with the frequent faces I saw. There weren’t any solid interactions with the employees—the same young folks I saw damn near every day. I didn’t even know their names. They didn’t know mine—we never asked each other. Everyday we’d meet eyes for a moment, they’d ask what I wanted to drink, and I’d always think, “You know damn well what I want, but you’re gonna make me say it.” Again and again, everyday—like I hadn’t just been in there every morning that week and ordered the same exact thing every time. Each spoken interaction was treated like the first and last one.
It was nice having the dog with me. Mothers and kids would walk past and smile ear-to-ear, asking if their little toddler could pet my mutt, asking if my mutt was friendly. I loved those times. I’d try and cram an entire month’s worth of silent café-going into one or two friendly sentences, smiling back so big the mom probably thought I was a loon. I didn’t care, I just thought it was nice to have someone reach out through the unknowing, and say something to a stranger.
Southern Café Candor
I recently moved to Georgia. There’s a lot that’s different about this place, especially when compared to Utah. For starters, God actually waters this land. Everything is green, everything is covered in trees, vines, bushes, weeds—something is always growing somewhere down here. Amid all that vegetation, there’s a new shop that I’ve found as a frequent stop for coffee, ideas, work, and people-watching. It’s name is quite hilarious, real one-of-a-kind. It’s called Because Coffee.
It’s a simple little shop, with one door in, same door out. There’s several café-styled tables out front, covered under the outcropping that bares the store’s signage. It’s the tail end of a long strip mall, allowing it to maintain a drive-through on the left side. Inside, there are several couches with a coffee table in between, and a huge family dinning table crafted from the oak of a thick tree, sitting in the middle of the room. On the far wall, a matching oaken table is structured into the building, set before a huge window that gazes out on a forest of dense emerald trees. Opposite that, there’s an oversized chalkboard stretching the entire surface of the wall, decorated with tons of drawings, poems, quotes, quips, and good ‘ole southern candor.
My order in this place will probably be the same as it was back in Utah. Medium, iced, black coffee, please. Although even today, as I walked through the doors for only the second time, I was greeted by a wave of chatter. Most seats were taken, even those at the dinning table in the middle of the room. People that didn’t know each other were slinging back high-quality bean water, talking about their opinions on Covid-19, the vaccines, the rising conflict in Afghanistan, the type of roast that flooded their cup—everything was up for discussion. No volume was too loud. There were plenty of y’alls and aints. It was like stepping into a city bar on a Friday night at 11:30PM, but I was moving through a strip mall coffee shop at 10:00AM on a Tuesday morning.
When I got up to the counter, ready to place my iced-coffee order, the lady looked right at me and said , “How are you doin’?” I answered that I was well, and asked her the same in return. Then she inquired, “What’s your name?” I was actually stunned, I think I forgot my name for half-a-second—I even said, “Uhh,” for a quick moment, as if I was searching for the answer. I’d been at the order counter for over twenty seconds, been asked two questions, and we hadn’t even gotten to the part where I told her what I wanted yet. This wasn’t how things normally went for me, and I was loving every second of it.
She told me her name, too. She smiled, took my order, and let me know that it would be right out. I found a spot against the wall, at the table that looked out on the dense forest beyond. I pulled out my laptop from my army surplus shoulder bag, flipped open the screen, and as I stretched my fingers, I heard, “Here ya go, Christian!” A man was holding out a medium, iced, black coffee, leaning over the counter top with a huge smile on his face. A different genuine character than the lady who had taken my order.
This dude knew my name. When he said my name, I looked up and my first thought was there must be another Christian in the joint. It’s a strange sensation when someone uses your name, someone you don’t know, someone you haven’t even really met yet. It makes you feel… human. Like you actually inhabit the body and shoes you’re walking around in. Just like Jim Croce sings, “Like the singin' bird and the croakin' toad, I've got a name, I've got a name.” Sometimes, it’s nice to be reminded of that by someone you barely know.
It seemed like everyone was there for more than just coffee. They were there to work, to converse, to discuss, to commune with the almighty community. To be a part of something that was little bigger than themselves. They were there to gather together, bring in the hands and mouths, make something happen—there for the belonging, the coffee was just the excuse to walk in the front door… well, Because Coffee.
A Lot of Things to A Lot of People
Coffee shops are representative. They show you what a place is like, what the ken of an area might hold. They might not paint the entire picture, might not give you the full experience of what it is to live in the mountains of Utah or the forests of Georgia. But they’ll give you a damn good clue.
There are elements of that quiet coffee shop in Cottonwood Heights, Utah that I’ll always miss. Solitude has value, and being anonymous can be wonderful when you’ve spent a full workday conversing with people, solving their problems, opening and closing your mouth for hours on end. Unknowing has it’s boons—it’s great for the timid, fantastic for the shy. Horrible for the one’s that want to break out. And I’m just as at fault for keeping to that coffee-house-silence as everyone else in that Cottonwood café. I had just convinced myself that was how it worked—people don’t want to be bothered, don’t want to interact with strangers.
I won’t lie—these new Georgian elements taste a little better. Even if I don’t always join in the conversation. Even if I still keep to myself on some café visits. When I open the swinging glass door and everyone is talking to everyone a few decibels louder than they need to, it heartens me up a little. Makes me feel less like everyone tolerates everyone, more like everyone yearns for everyone.
The social roast goes on, the bean water pumps through our veins. The café doors will always be open for us to get a snapshot of our communal living. And so long as that’s the case, I’ll keep being there, observing, talking, and ordering my little cup; one black, iced, medium coffee, please.