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A Random, Yet Deserved, Quote of the Day v. 10-24-08
Space is the enemy here, and geopolitical boundaries seem to be the enemy of our coalescence. Because the entity is known as “Texas” it seems to make sense that we should all be one big happy family. But as the interstate sign makes clear as you cross into Texas from Louisiana, this really is a big, big place. The sign reads: WELCOME TO TEXAS! Beaumont = 15 miles; Houston = 150 miles; El Paso = 798 miles. Thus, we have to make the best of our situation by grabbing every opportunity for community, no matter how frequency and geographically-challenged and those opportunities are.
- Aaron Blanco
“coming up” - http://coffeepress.blogspot.com
Cappuccino Movie - Dates and Times Update for Houston and Dallas
Remember this post? “The Perfect Cappuccino” Movie Screens in Texas!
Well, Amy emailed again to fill in the details on the screenings in Houston and Dallas. Unfortunately, the Houston screening is happening right smack in the middle of the South Central Regional Barista Competition, though if you are in the Houston area and are not planning to make the trek to Austin for the competition, be sure to check it out!
THE PERFECT CAPPUCCINO at Real Films, Houston, TX
Saturday, November 1, reception at 7 pm, screening at 8 pm, Q&A with the filmmaker at 9:30 pm
The Aurora Theater, 800 Aurora Avenue, Houston, TX 77009
Tickets: $10.00 online or $10.00 cash/check at the door. Ticket price includes free refreshments: beer, soft drinks, water, and popcorn (and hopefully coffee too! We are working on it…)
Door Prize: A signed DVD of the film
Local Sponsors: Catalina Coffee and Cuvee Coffee
For more info, please visit www.realfilms.org
THE PERFECT CAPPUCCINO at the Dallas Video Festival
Sunday, November 9, 10:30 am
Angelika Film Center
5321 E. Mockingbird Lane
Dallas, TX 75206
214-826-3300
For info/tickets, please visit www.videofest.org
Coffee, Culture, and Music
Music has long been a big part of coffee house culture for many people. The morning brings about the need for energizing comfort in a cup, and the evening brings the desire for social interaction, and a little local culture for many coffee house patrons.
Naturally, we like to focus on coffee quality as the high priority around here, but how many play host to local or traveling musicians? A shop here built their name as sort of a venue, and the coffee quality came later. Reverse order, if you ask me, but still… far better to be late than to have missed the boat entirely.
I often enjoyed the “culture” found in a bustling coffeehouse warmed with the sounds of a one-man(or woman) folk band, or a jazz/funk/experimental quintet, or anything in between seemingly breaking the social ice, not offering even a chance for it to form. Everyone is there to have a good time, and everyone knows it. Everyone also knows that the air will (usually) be smoke-free, and that the likelihood of a loud drunk ruining the fun is extraordinarily slim, at best.
The undefined, yet undeniably present cafe culture in the United States is what drew me to the specialty coffee scene years ago as a young teen. Back then, I didn’t know anything about the coffee. What I did know is that all of the retail spaces that made me feel at home had one thing in common. That one thing was coffee. This only further fueled the spark of respect I inherently possessed for the beverage. Eventually, this respect blossomed into a desire to learn, to understand, to know, and to spread the enjoyment of quality coffee.
How does this all relate? For a lot of people, they are not drawn in by the bean, but by the culture surrounding it in certain retailers.
We’d like to know. Is the availability of live music in a coffee retailer much of a priority for you? Honestly, it is no longer a high priority, but I still enjoy going to a shop that not only knows how to serve a good cup of coffee, but also plays host to numerous musicians looking for an audience.
If you find that it is, or was, a priority for yourself, where did it begin? Where do you go now?
Starbucks intended competition = coopetition?
SLATE presents,
Don’t Fear Starbucks
Why the franchise actually helps mom and pop coffeehouses. (click)
It appears that having Starbucks move down the road from your coffee retailer may not be such a bad thing afterall.
I’ve been saying for a long time that Starbucks has done more good by “enlarging the pie” than they have harm by misleading customers with drink titles. For many people, Starbucks is their first experience with Specialty Coffee. Starbucks is common enough to not seem overly intimidating for the average consumer, but is socially elevated enough to give the impression of being something above average.
With their marketing success, and exponential growth rate, having a new store moving in near your retailer can be a scary thought. This article gives a brief insight as to why it may not be such a scary thing.
I do, however, feel that it is important to point out that the focus is on quality, and only quality.
Perhaps the Barista Guild of America is right. “Quality as the primary means of success.”
SLATE: Why Starbucks actually helps mom and pop coffeehouses by Taylor Clark
Welcome, Cafe Gallo!
Grand Opening in San Antonio!
Cafe Gallo, in the Gallista Gallery
1913 S. Flores Street, San Antonio, TX
Google Map and Directions
Just a quick note here that tomorrow, Saturday 13 October, is the grand opening of a new espresso bar on San Antonio’s up and coming South Flores corridor.
Cafe Gallo, tucked inside one of the area’s avant galleries known as the Gallista Gallery, is headed by Jason Garcia, a former culinary boundary pusher with the luminous likes of La Reve and Biga on the Banks on his resume. The grand opening will coincide with a new South Flores area visual and performing arts event known as Second Saturday Smart Fair, with events for all ages such as visual art, live music, theater, film and video, poetry, workshops and food. The area is adjacent to the hip Southtown area of San Antonio and is a haven hole for chic and trendy artists and scenesters alike.
The staff at Cafe Gallo have been trained by Texas Coffee People’s very own Jason Haeger of Espresso Trainer.com and will feature a small lineup of espresso beverages, single-origin drip coffee created via manual pour-overs, and a focused menu of homemade Mexican pastries and sandwiches.
While Jason Garcia and his small crew are very excited to be opening, they are viewing this as a very first step in what promises to be an ever-evolving coffee and culinary experience that takes advantage of the blossoming South Flores loft and condo corridor on San Antonio’s southside.
Grand opening events at Cafe Gallo will kick off sometime around 1pm. The cafe and gallery is located at 1319 S. Flores Street.
Let’s Keep It Rollin’
Piggybacking on Jason’s last post about sustainability, I was reading today about a new book raising lots of interestingly difficult issues about our (humans’) presence on this earth.
The book is called The World Without Us, by a fellow name Alan Weisman, and it is, as the title implies, a work of educated speculation about what the world would be like at some distant point in the future, uh, without us. It’s basically the usual humdrumage of self-promotion wrapped in “thought provoking” attire, complete with their current New York Times ranking on the best-sellers’ list. (Ah yes, the New York Times. The paper of record, of course. Now it’s officially a good book.) It also has some cool interactive pieces that give you a visual of the stunningly shameful way we have impacted our environment. I had to remind myself it was a book they are selling, after all, and not a enviro-religio fatwa to pack up and move to the mountains to get off the proverbial grid. 40 years ago it was, “Our planet is becoming overpopulated. There are almost one billion people here now.” 30 years ago it was, “The earth is cooling rapidly. We’re heading into another ice age.” Recently that was replaced with, “Uh-oh, the earth isn’t cooling; it’s actually warming up!” Today, it’s, “Plastics will be around for a stinking loooong time and eventually little tiny microbes will be all that’s left on the planet; but it’s okay, they’ll figure out how to eat plastics.” That’s the summary of the book, as best as I can tell from the web site’s synopses and preview clips.
Anyways, at this point in this blog post, if you’re still with me, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with coffee. Not much. Except…except to say that we are guilty of our own environmental foibles as an industry, despite all our window dressing to the contrary. We need to fess up to the fact that many of our retail stores don’t have separate receptacles for plastic, newspapers, aluminum and glass. Or that we are still just realizing that paper cups don’t biodegrade so well in sealed landfills but ceramic uses the equivalent resources to make as some 35,000 paper cups. (A good tradeoff?) Or that we waste electricity by leaving our espresso machines on overnight because we don’t want to have to get to the shop that much earlier in the morning to let it warm up.
And so forth. My point is not to cast aspersions on us as an industry. I’m just saying skimming through this book’s website got me thinking a little bit about doing my part to reduce the size of my environmental footprint in the industry in which I work.
Here’s a YouTube teaser:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBpWHHZ2eME]
Let’s Keep It Rollin’
Piggybacking on Jason’s last post about sustainability, I was reading today about a new book raising lots of interestingly difficult issues about our (humans’) presence on this earth.
The book is called The World Without Us, by a fellow name Alan Weisman, and it is, as the title implies, a work of educated speculation about what the world would be like at some distant point in the future, uh, without us. It’s basically the usual humdrumage of self-promotion wrapped in “thought provoking” attire, complete with their current New York Times ranking on the best-sellers’ list. (Ah yes, the New York Times. The paper of record, of course. Now it’s officially a good book.) It also has some cool interactive pieces that give you a visual of the stunningly shameful way we have impacted our environment. I had to remind myself it was a book they are selling, after all, and not a enviro-religio fatwa to pack up and move to the mountains to get off the proverbial grid. 40 years ago it was, “Our planet is becoming overpopulated. There are almost one billion people here now.” 30 years ago it was, “The earth is cooling rapidly. We’re heading into another ice age.” Recently that was replaced with, “Uh-oh, the earth isn’t cooling; it’s actually warming up!” Today, it’s, “Plastics will be around for a stinking loooong time and eventually little tiny microbes will be all that’s left on the planet; but it’s okay, they’ll figure out how to eat plastics.” That’s the summary of the book, as best as I can tell from the web site’s synopses and preview clips.
Anyways, at this point in this blog post, if you’re still with me, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with coffee. Not much. Except…except to say that we are guilty of our own environmental foibles as an industry, despite all our window dressing to the contrary. We need to fess up to the fact that many of our retail stores don’t have separate receptacles for plastic, newspapers, aluminum and glass. Or that we are still just realizing that paper cups don’t biodegrade so well in sealed landfills but ceramic uses the equivalent resources to make as some 35,000 paper cups. (A good tradeoff?) Or that we waste electricity by leaving our espresso machines on overnight because we don’t want to have to get to the shop that much earlier in the morning to let it warm up.
And so forth. My point is not to cast aspersions on us as an industry. I’m just saying skimming through this book’s website got me thinking a little bit about doing my part to reduce the size of my environmental footprint in the industry in which I work.
Here’s a YouTube teaser:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBpWHHZ2eME]
Let’s Keep It Rollin’
Piggybacking on Jason’s last post about sustainability, I was reading today about a new book raising lots of interestingly difficult issues about our (humans’) presence on this earth.
The book is called The World Without Us, by a fellow name Alan Weisman, and it is, as the title implies, a work of educated speculation about what the world would be like at some distant point in the future, uh, without us. It’s basically the usual humdrumage of self-promotion wrapped in “thought provoking” attire, complete with their current New York Times ranking on the best-sellers’ list. (Ah yes, the New York Times. The paper of record, of course. Now it’s officially a good book.) It also has some cool interactive pieces that give you a visual of the stunningly shameful way we have impacted our environment. I had to remind myself it was a book they are selling, after all, and not a enviro-religio fatwa to pack up and move to the mountains to get off the proverbial grid. 40 years ago it was, “Our planet is becoming overpopulated. There are almost one billion people here now.” 30 years ago it was, “The earth is cooling rapidly. We’re heading into another ice age.” Recently that was replaced with, “Uh-oh, the earth isn’t cooling; it’s actually warming up!” Today, it’s, “Plastics will be around for a stinking loooong time and eventually little tiny microbes will be all that’s left on the planet; but it’s okay, they’ll figure out how to eat plastics.” That’s the summary of the book, as best as I can tell from the web site’s synopses and preview clips.
Anyways, at this point in this blog post, if you’re still with me, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with coffee. Not much. Except…except to say that we are guilty of our own environmental foibles as an industry, despite all our window dressing to the contrary. We need to fess up to the fact that many of our retail stores don’t have separate receptacles for plastic, newspapers, aluminum and glass. Or that we are still just realizing that paper cups don’t biodegrade so well in sealed landfills but ceramic uses the equivalent resources to make as some 35,000 paper cups. (A good tradeoff?) Or that we waste electricity by leaving our espresso machines on overnight because we don’t want to have to get to the shop that much earlier in the morning to let it warm up.
And so forth. My point is not to cast aspersions on us as an industry. I’m just saying skimming through this book’s website got me thinking a little bit about doing my part to reduce the size of my environmental footprint in the industry in which I work.
Here’s a YouTube teaser:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBpWHHZ2eME]
We care about sustainability in Coffee..
We also care about sustainability in other aspects of the human existence on earth.
I saw this bulletin on Myspace from Imbibe Magazine, and felt I should share it with the readership of TX-Coffee.com.
Got 5 minutes? Help build a well from the comfort of home…
Did you know that 1.1 billion people of the world’s 6 billion population doesn’t have access to safe drinking water? The people at Drop in the Bucket are working to change that, one well at a time. This year-old group has already completed 5 wells in Uganda, with 9 others planned and hopes to expand. The Los Angeles-based organization has low operating costs, making donated dollars go far to provide permanent drinking water to people who may have once relied on malaria-infested muddy water as their main source.
To support this creative and ambitious group, we are making a donation to Drop in the Bucket every time a reader completes our quick readership survey.
http://www.imbibemagazine.com/surveyJust complete the survey, and you help the noble efforts of this wonderful project.
http://www.imbibemagazine.com/survey
What a great idea. Just like buying barista tools from a vendor who donates a portion of profits to Coffee Kids, or Bikes to Rwanda. This time, it’s about healthy drinking water. If you thought your tap water was bad, think again.
The organization itself:
Take three minutes of your time. It won’t cost you a thing.
The Search for the Perfect Cappuccino: A Documentary.
I have a problem. I am obsessed with the cappuccino. I mean, obsessed. I will go miles and miles out of my way just to try a new one. I lie awake at night thinking about them. I even suspect that the cappuccino is the main reason that I keep finding excuses to go live in Italy.
But I’m an American. And every time I go into a new coffee shop here in America, I feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. All previous experience indicates that what I’m about to do will be a disaster, but I let myself get suckered into it anyway. American cappuccinos are typically way too large, far too hot, and served in paper cups whose steep sides make it impossible to fully experience the cappuccino in a single sip. They’re also topped with stiff peaks that would be more at home on a key lime pie than a cup of coffee. Occasionally, they have been befouled with cinnamon. …more.
The above is an excerpt from a description about the film. It’s a deep detailed look into why American coffee is the way it is, and what it signifies for the rest of our culture.
I can’t wait until this thing screens on a national level. It must.
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