Wednesday, January 17, 2007


small correction

you know what always happens with these meetups, like tonite's, is that i put my notes down and wander around the room until i've lost 'em. this sometimes causes me to confuse my numbers, mis-spell urls, forget to mention the name of books, etc.

for example, tonite we happened to mention mr. zabar's coffees. the upper west side of manhattan sometimes seems like a specialty coffee wasteland, but there's always gillies coffee at fairway!

otherwise, the mermaid and zabar's dominates the upper west side, to my mind. anyway, i said tons when i actually meant pounds.

so sorry about that and next time, dear nyc coffee lovers, i promise to carry my note cards with me every step. also, next meetup i won't have to talk so much, because i guarantee you, my voice isn't that exciting to me, esp. when i get tired.

i'd say the new year's meetup followed the same pattern as usual -- a certain number of people come, and when i say that while the mermaid is of course a valued scaa member, and if you like their coffee great, but i'm not going to really talk a lot about that coffee, because that's not really my artisan, "third wave" focus here -- a lot of people just vamoose.

and that's cool. if you love the green machine, feel free to rock on. there's an audience for every coffee, as now cqi chief ted lingle has said.

but my focus is on a slightly different wavelength. i can't pretend that i'm a mermaid fan, because everyone knows that it doesn't work for me personally; likewise everyone knows i'm not going hang out and praise the red or the blue supermarket can.

we in new york have our own coffee culture, which i think we should work to strengthen. and so i don't think there's anything wrong with talking about standard roast coffees, you know, instead of just saying, oh, the west coast style rules.

i'm not ashamed of the regular. i refuse to be ashamed of the regular.

i just want to brew the regular to perfection with the highest quality specialty beans, the freshest beans, and freshly ground. . . like peter giuliano's counterculture nicaragua co-op luis vasquez, which makes a fantastic coffee with milk, as the milk only enhances that bean's already milky chocolate aftertaste.

so after i give my little speech and people ask me a lot of questions, and i attempt to be as self-deprecating and amusing as possible -- i'm not naturally a funny person, i confess, i find making jokes difficult sometimes -- i'm always left with a smaller group of people who are actually into this "find out about third wave coffee" and "brew better at home" gig.

am i done yet? i hope so!

anyway, thanks again to scaa board member mary p. and the great folks at juan valdez -- angel, patty, and the crew -- tonite we drank the ladera, a blend with maragogype. . .

Tags: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

posted by fortune | 9:25 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 1 comments