Seattle = Coffee

As you know, coffee shops are not in short supply. But, nowhere are they more plentiful than the Seattle area, where rival shop windows glare at each other from opposite corners of nearly every intersection. In 1971, in the Pike Place Market, Seattle gave birth to the single coffee shop that would become the mega chain, Starbucks. Although that first location no longer houses a Starbucks, it has been memorialized on sweatshirts (I have one), mugs, and other stuff. If not for an indisputable fact of geography, that coffee beans grow in many places in the world but Seattle isn't one of them, we might think coffee was invented here.

I never acquired a taste for coffee but I love the idea of it. People seem to connect on some basic coffee level, as if DNA-driven to do so. We non-coffee drinkers are fortunate that coffee shops usually offer good tea so we don't have to linger on the outskirts of the herd where predators can pick us off. I used to think it was a grown-up drink, for big boys and girls, but now high schoolers meet for coffee instead of soda. Archie and Jughead have abandoned the malt shop and now sip lattes with Betty and Veronica at coffee shops instead. The summer I graduated from high school I worked in a bank where I was the youngest person there. The only available beverage was coffee; people met at the pot in the morning before starting time, and again for scheduled coffee breaks at mid-morning and afternoon. Wanting to fit in with the big kids, and feeling thirsty, I poured a cup in solidarity with the adults, nursed it, and tried not to wince with every swallow. I kept a purse full of Certs to combat the nasty after taste and potentially lethal coffee breath. I assumed the taste would grow on me but I gave it up after a couple months and brought a can of Diet Coke every day thereafter. Actually, it was probably Tab back then.

Over the years, I've felt a tad melancholy over having started and ended a coffee habit all in one summer prior to my 18th birthday. Even before I'd ever heard of Starbucks, I knew coffee had raised its profile, gone gourmet, gotten really cool. Coffee had become a concept; that DNA-coffee molecule had risen to the surface making coffee the mainest of the main stream. I sought, and found, teas that were doing the same thing, however, they were doing it only for me. As one of the mere handful of tea drinkers operating in the coffee-fueled universe I kept wondering what I was missing. And yet, I was not a coffee virgin; I actually knew it had a crummy taste. Through experience, I knew I didn't like it.

Regardless of the known facts, I still felt as left out as the girl not invited to the popular kid's party. Even though I frequented a few favorite coffee shops, doing so while sipping tea made me feel like a country club guest on a day pass. Oddly, the other highly regarded beverage for which I never acquired a taste, beer, does not give me the same feelings of inadequacy. I can remain unfazed in a room full of beer drinkers while sipping wine, water, or even tea. Once, I attended a beer tasting party where I participated by taking the tiniest sips ever. None of the beers tasted good, but I marked my ballot by comparing them against each other, which was essentially what the real beer lovers did. In fact, my top choice was also the winner! That notwithstanding, I was pleased to have the beer tasting completed so I could enjoy another drink while remaining unperturbed that the majority continued sampling the beverages of honor. Of course, I probably felt a twinge of regret later in the evening when the host and hostess began serving coffee.

A couple of years ago, something I learned in a film gave me pause with regard to coffee. It rattled both the belief system and the pedestal I'd erected for the brown liquid which I, for so long, had felt repelled by, and yet desired. Upon learning this new information, I felt simply repelled . . . period. Coffee had gone over - no pun intended - to the dark side. It had crossed a line that nothing meant for human consumption should ever cross. I can give you the short version in two words . . . poop beans. For those of us out of the coffee loop, seeing The Bucket List probably introduced us to poop beans from Sumatra. For the first time, I felt fortunate for not drinking coffee. As such, no practical joker could ever hoodwink me into drinking the poop coffee.

The long version is kind of interesting, in a Darwinian/National Geographic fashion. Poop beans are not exclusive to Sumatra; they grow throughout the Indonesian Archipelago, East Timor, the Philippines, and possibly Vietnam. In these places lives a semi-adorable little creature with beady eyes and button nose, the Asian palm civet, that eats the red coffee berry wherein the seed, or bean, is contained. In a perfect example of natural selection, civets tend to eat the most ripe and sweetest of the berries, thus selecting the ripest beans. The bean passes whole through the civet's digestive system with some residual fruit matter still attached. The animal's stomach enzymes have a calming effect on the bean's proteins which would otherwise yield bitter tasting coffee. Apparently, this renders a coffee that tastes like caramel and chocolate. What's not to like about those two flavors? I repeat . . . poop beans. This story begs the question: Who was the first person to think it was a good idea, without yet knowing the enzyme/protein/bitter free angle, to try making coffee from the civet's poop beans.

Back when the harvesting of beans from civet poop was still a cottage industry, humans knew that each civet, in an effort to mark territory, would defecate in a specific location. Someone thought to call those places latrines . . . eeooow! The coffee people would then collect the civet feces from the known latrines. Now it's more common to have Asian palm civets roaming free within a coffee farm's specified boundaries. Either way, the beans are then washed (oh, I feel much better now) and only lightly roasted in order not to ruin the good flavor that this process naturally derives. Did I mention you pay dearly for the privilege of drinking poop coffee? Poop beans are the world's most expensive and a cup will set you back at least $30. You can't make this up.

A year or so ago, Starbucks marketing people created a program where customers can register their Starbucks cards on-line and enjoy free WiFi, among other perks, as long as the card is used or reloaded within a month of logging on. The other perks mostly pertain to coffee so the WiFi benefit attracted me . . . so simple, and yet so genius. By the way, no pun intended with my use of the word perks. Thanks to my card, I made much use of Starbucks' WiFi as I'd schlep my laptop to various locations, search job postings, and e-mail resumes all for the cost of a cup of tea. Technically, I wasn't required to buy the tea if my card had the required activity, but I've always felt obliged to make a purchase even if just making a pit stop in the restroom. Due to the perils of frequency, sometimes my favorite tea, African Red Bush, would get old and I'd experiment with other flavors. I found, despite taking my tea without milk, that I really liked the frothy foamed milk topping on a tea latte. Not sure how they do it but I'm sure it's good.

Since the summer, my daily walking schedule has led me to the restroom at the neighborhood Starbucks on my route, precisely for that pit stop, several times each week, where patronizing the establishment with a drink purchase demonstrates my appreciation for the convenience of using their clean facilities; and also means I make drink purchases repetitiously. In addition to African Red Bush tea, and my two favorite tea lattes: Earl Grey, and Vanilla Roiboos, I delayed monotony by ordering Passion iced tea lemonade on the hottest days, of which this summer held many. By September, when I received my birthday free-beverage postcard - another bennie of the registered Starbucks card - monotony had long since overtaken those attempts to keep it at bay. Despite having four different go-to drinks, the ad nauseum frequency of my visits had rendered them all tiresome, annoying even. I redeemed my birthday drink postcard for a Cafe Mocha with whipped cream. The barista helped me design it so the single shot of coffee provided merely an under flavor to the six pumps of chocolate. Perhaps the cravings of my chocoholic nature clawed their way to the surface after months without M&Ms and Peanut Butter Cups.

Turns out coffee tastes interesting when surrounded by chocolate and topped with whipped cream. Who knew? At first I thought I might order Cafe Mocha about twice a month. I'm now up to three times a week. Maybe it just tastes better in Seattle. Sometimes I want to order it a second time in the same day. What's next? Lattes? Espresso? Irish Coffee? Poop beans? Oh, man, this might be a slippery slope.