poorboyoftroy

For a sedentary person, I spend a lot of time thinking about public spaces. This isn't to say that it's particularly productive or profound thinking in nature -- but it borders on the prolific. Whether it's weekend farmers markets, coffee shops, large institutions spanning indoor and outdoor spaces like the Woodland Park Zoo, public transit, or the de facto agora that is the Central Public Library, the ritualization of public life engendered by the combination of architectural and urban planning design (as well as the omission of any design intent) is of endless interest to me. My commute unfortunately doesn't involve public transit at the moment, but I believe strongly in it and vote accordingly. Seattle's public transit funding and infrastructure is on the uptick, but it has a lot of ground to gain in what is an intrinsically west coast, car-besotted city in the midst of a population boom. Dedicated bus lanes and the recent expansion of light rail help, but w...

As I age, so do my musical tastes, which is to say, genres and musicians I had previously dismissed in my 20's as moribund or risibly out of vogue have become suddenly much more intriguing simply by virtue of the passage of time. New Age music appears to be the latest beneficiary of this ineluctable process. Just as I've started to flirt with eastern religions and literature, so have I started listening to artists who incorporate musical, cultural, and spiritual traditions from the Subcontinent and Southeast Asia into various western musical genres, sometimes to stunning artistic success. Alice Coltrane, Bill Laswell, and Steve Roach, though fusing their appropriated material with very different western genres, have all produced excellent albums that honor their respective traditions. My interest in Laraaji actually precedes any engagement with New Age music as such, and this is entirely due to the fact that Brian Eno produced his debut album, "Ambient 3: Day of Radian...

Portland has a very distinctive retail infrastructure, one that elicits strange, public rituals and leads to experiences of unbridled, non-value add whimsy. An example of this: rounding the corner at SE 32nd and Hawthorne, one encounters a small parking lot dominated by a red, double-decker bus that houses, you guessed it, a coffee shop. It has tables, like a restaurant Tov Coffee  is much like every other food cart in Portland: larger than food trucks in other cities and just as questionably mobile. But Tov is so much more than a "mobile" retail space for upscale casual dining: it's its own vibrant, fully immersive world. Close, but not too close, quarters I was overwhelmed by the density of build-out and human activity in the back-half of the lower-level. Two baristas, a commercial espresso machine, and at least 3 people waiting on drinks -- it shouldn't all fit, not this comfortably, but it does. The custom purple paint job, which extends ...

Don't tell the bros of  Callus Coffee , Seattle's newest coffee pop-up shop, that 2017 may be a little too late to get in on the trend of infilling America's urban cores with third-wave coffee bars bearing unfortunate, esoteric names. 2017 is a year of political upheaval, a year when the wheels of #resistance are turning, resolutely focused on forestalling #Trumpocalypse by galvanizing the American left in a united front the likes of which we haven't seen in generations. It's time to retrench, for us all to focus on our essential values and ensure that our democratic institutions have the fortitude to provide for a viable future. This requires constructive anger. Apathy is not acceptable -- if you aren't angry, you aren't alive. It's difficult to maintain one's righteous fury when sampling the single-origin pour over offerings and mulling the purchase of artisanal coffee mugs at a new coffee bar in a former industrial district, all the while dicking...

Uptown Espresso, a Second Wave Coffee staple and “Home of the Velvet Foam” A quick preface: I’ve had a lot of great coffee at Third Wave shops over the past few years, often served by really lovely and knowledgeable baristas who clearly enjoy what they do (and whose enjoyment enhances the customer experience). I also feel strongly that the Third Wave is a deservedly important strand of the broader historical development of coffee from which coffee lovers have benefited greatly. Here, I’m really taking issue with the Third Wave orthodoxy, its ridiculous tropes of artisanality, “honesty” in roasting, and rigidity in preparation methods, as well as its clear solipsism and sense of superiority with regard to pre-existing coffee methodologies.  The ideology and practices writ large, in other words, not the people. The Third Wave Experience It used to be so simple to get a good cup of coffee. Or so we thought. The doyens of the Third Wave Coffee movement, today’s dominant coffee purvey...