Coffee Dreams

 "One more cup of coffee for the road

One more cup of coffee 'fore I go

To the valley below" Bob Dylan

Big Mama Thornton (1926-1984) made the scene at coffeehouses and blues joints including the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach.

Coffee. Made from the seed of a berry. 

Call it a bean. Roast it. Grind it. 

Filter it with hot water. 

Express it with steam

Press it, pour it over ice 

Drink it from a cup, black

Add milk or whiskey 

Our morning elixir.

Afternoon fixer

Wake up and smell the coffee.

Coffee Guys

Benjamin Franklin, statesman and inventor, the face of our 100-dollar bill, consumed coffee like water, dashing between coffeehouses in Boston and Philadelphia for social and political connections, jacked on caffeine.

Honore de Balzac, French novelist with a very cool three-part name, is said to have fueled his prodigious literary output with a 50-cups-a-day habit. 

Composer Ludwig van Beethoven didn't simply write pieces like his Ninth Symphony off the top of his head; to juice himself, he meticulously counted 60 beans for each cup of coffee he drank.

French philosopher Voltaire, who had the distinction of a single name -- like Sting and Beyonce -- wins top prize for quantity of coffee consumed. Reports have him doing 72 cups a day -- presumably while probing the inner meaning of being. 

Coffee lore runs deep in human history, from the 17th Century.

Researching coffee on the internet will lead you around the world from Africa to the MidEast, through Europe to Costa Rica into South America, where the largest producer of coffee is located: Brazil. Although Vietnam has lately made impressive gains into second place, according to Google AI. Expect the price of Brazilian and Vietnamese coffees to rise significantly due to heavy tariffs imposed on those countries by Der Fuehrer of the U.S., who drinks soda pop.

Fun Fact: The Boston Tea Party in 1773 caused a coffee craze in the colonies due to the boycott of tea which came from mother England from whom we were trying to escape. You could call it the original American "coffee break." 

In the 60s my friends and I could go to Coco's Coffee Shop and get a bottomless cup of joe for a dime, maybe it was a quarter. We'd hold the table for hours into the night discussing, more like gossiping about, our friends and telling stories that make the world turn when you're a teenager wannabe-adult. Bottomless meant the waitress would refill your cup whenever it ran low. 

A coffee shop was basically a restaurant, or cafe (origin: kahve, Turkish for coffee), that  might stay open when the dance was over and you wanted to continue having fun with your friends. 

Coffee, where it is served and its price, have changed with the times, yet it has never lost its place as a catalyst for conversation and community.

The term "coffee shop,” seems to be trending again. I overheard this during a discussion at a local "coffeehouse," the name for establishments that sell specialty coffee drinks and offer an atmosphere for lingering, or hanging out. 

Coffeehouse to me has always referred to the bohemian 1950s-60s beatnik scene where jazz, poetry and folk music flourished in an intimate setting. 

Then I find out from Wikipedia that the first coffeehouses were located in 15h Century Damascus, known, poetically, as the City of Jasmine, one of the oldest cities in the Middle East and a crossroads for trade, commerce, silks and spices. 

The muddy drink itself originated about the same time in Ethiopia where the climate and soil are perfect for growing the tree-like plant that produces the prized coffee berries. The dark brew from the roasted berries (actually the pits of the berries) was drunk as a stimulant for staying awake during prayer, among other high-concentration scenarios.

My favorite coffeehouse in the Sixties was the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, located on PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) across the road from the legendary pier and surf break. Although the pier and waves still exist, the Golden Bear remains only a fond memory. 

For me it recalls nursing cups of java with friends while enjoying the likes of folksinger Hoyt Axton, Jose Feliciano and blues original, Big Mama Thornton, whose stage presence was substantial --  big body, short pants, long legs and bellowing voice. She blew a mean mouth harp as well. Truthfully, I was afraid of her.

We didn’t need an ID to get in. We drank soft drinks and coffee. As inlanders, we haunted these coastal joints — including the Prison of Socrates in Newport Beach and the Cosmos in Seal Beach — during the summer. I heard about a banjo player who supposedly looked like me. I'm pretty sure it was Steve Martin, who would soon become known as the guy who wore an arrow through his head on the Johnny Carson show.

Tony Lombardi (left) and Dave Fredricks (right) join me on patio at The Shrine Coffee Shop winter 2023.

cappuccino 

Coffee Renaissance

During the late1970s, coffee became more than a cup of joe. Suddenly we started sipping French roast, chewing bagels and arguing over how to pronounce, croissant.

Perhaps the most influential name from that burgeoning scene was Howard Schultz. (No relation to the popular Peanuts cartoonist of that era, Charles Schultz.) Howard had taken a trip to research the coffee bars of Italy, as a marketing guy for a Seattle coffee roaster named Starbucks. In 1982 he purchased Starbucks and introduced a menu of specialty coffee drinks made with espresso. He served them in cups of varying sizes with weird names, like vente.

Fun Fact: Starbucks is named after the first mate in Herman Melville's classic novel, Moby Dick.

The introduction of specialty coffee drinks is considered the Second Wave of Coffee Culture, according to Drive Coffee Roasters, of Chanhassen, Minnesota. The First Wave of Coffee Culture arrived during the 1940s  under names like Maxwell House, Folgers and Yuban. The coffee was made from Robusta berries that were plentiful, easy to grow and produced a bitter brew. 

The new specialty coffee concoctions were made from Arabica berries, which require unique growing regions and produce lighter, more complex flavors. French roast is made from long roasted Arabica beans. 

Fun fact: The name "joe" for coffee is believed to refer to the common everyman whose lifeblood and energy came from drinking his daily brew and taking periodic rests called coffee breaks during which workers chewed the fat. Few call coffee "joe" anymore. More like "java," which relates to the Indonesian country of Java renowned for its high-quality Arabica coffee beans.

We are currently experiencing the Third Wave of Coffee Culture. That is, sourcing the origins of the various coffee plants to discover unique flavors in exotic growing regions. In this regard coffee culture is similar to whiskey culture, as in, aficionados of Scotch made from peat found in the musky bogs of Scotland. Single origin, or single malt, indicates that all production is completed at the source.

We pay big time for the unique qualities of the single-origin brew. Supply and demand meet advertising and promotion. The 25-cents we paid for a cup of coffee in 1965, is equivalent to $2.55 in today’s inflated dollars. That’s still only half of what you’ll pay today for a decent cup of java.

If you want to go fully retrograde you can simply make yourself a pot of Cowboy Coffee from the remnants of yesterday's grind combined with egg shells, tobacco bits and whatever else will float your boat. That'll make your horse holler! 

Nothing could be finer than a steaming cup of freshly ground single-origin Arabica from say, Equador, on a cold morning listening to the birds chirp when you're out on the range, or at a campsite overlooking a lazy river. 

Fun fact: Caffeine is the most widely consumed and unregulated psychoactive drug on the planet. It comes from the seeds, nuts and leaves of particular plants native to Africa, Asia and South America. Think chocolate. Think Coca Cola. Think coffee.

Coffee Angel

When was the last time you dropped into McDonald's for a cup of coffee? Just sayin, their premium brewed coffee is made from 100% Arabica beans. 

On road trips through the backroads of America (see my blogs Thunderbird at High Noon and Montana Moonrise), McDonald's was my go-to for a cup of mud. The Golden Arches show up in almost every town near a highway. A "senior" coffee will cost you an average of 80-cents a cup at "participating" McDonald's, where you'll likely find a table of old guys shooting the breeze and sipping brew in the morning. These patrons are having just as much fun with their caffeine fix as those paying five-to-ten times more at Starbucks.

Not-So-Fun-Fact-Turned-Fun-Fact: McDonald's has gone electronic so you have to order your viddles (cowboy talk for grub... er, food) at a kiosk. That includes your coffee. Which is a problem. The last time I tried it -- a couple of weeks ago at McDonald's in Gonzales, California on Highway 101-- it became a contest between me and the machine. It was a puzzle of buttons I couldn’t solve. A young woman appeared behind me: "Can I help you?"

She obviously saw how distressed I had become. She was well-dressed, perfectly coiffed and her dark eyes as honest as the morning light. She calmly went through the process, asking me what I wanted and delicately pushing the proper buttons. I would have walked out had it not been for this angel. She was with her mother and father, also well-attired, who were closer to my age and spoke with their smiles since they could not speak English. They were likely related to the great farmworker population of Central California.

I can only guess as to why they were dressed up.

"Thank you so much," I said. "Muchas gracias," I added to her parents. I wanted to tell them that their daughter is an angel. I’m sure they knew that already. Based on their expressions, I believe they saw me as a crazy gringo who just needed a cup of coffee.

Note: Google has introduced automated "meta tags" to blogs and I have started using them in my posts: underlined colored words that link to online information. Let me know what you think? I think they're pretty cool, but could interfere with reading. Much of the information is generated by AI and seems trustworthy. As always, comments welcome. 

As Wes "Scoop" Nisker used to say: "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."