Mileage, community and passion
A passion for coffee, something inexplicable, has taken hold of many people in the coffee industry. I am included in this. I gave up a career as a working musician to become a starving barista. crazy. But I do it for the passion, something intangible in the coffee that consumes my life. At times the passion leads to frustration. Frustration with the state of coffee in the metro area. There are days I dream of moving to a coffee centric town like Portland or Seattle where I can be a barista among baristas, and then there are days when I listen to the pf.net pod-cast with John Hornall (number 50) and believe that Denver (and the front range) can become a coffee town.
So today I'm in a state of coffee isolation. I have a customer who told me he lives equal distance from Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City and St. Louis. I decided to google it and yes, Mt. Pleasant IA is a 5-6 hr drive to any of these cities. On the other-hand, for me to get to any of these cities it is 10 - 16 hrs (or more). OK what are the cities near the Denver Metro area? Albuquerque 8 hours (though I did do it in 5.5 leaving at 2 a.m. and averaging 110 from Pueblo to NM). Salt Lake is about 9 hours. And neither of these cities are any closer to coffee than we are here. So a coffee waste land. But my eternal optimist always shines through. Let's make the Denver area a coffee mecca. Yeehaa. Yes there are some very passionate people in town, but when it comes to baristas it seems few want to put any effort forth.
This is a call to all baristas in the Denver area, in fact the whole Front Range, to step it up and create a coffee culture. If you feel the same passion for coffee and community that I feel let's work together to make this town known for killer coffee. If you haven't been to the jams, or if you only made one of them, show up to this next Jam on the 19th. (more info will be posted soon). Start talking up the jams to baristas at all the coffee shops around you. As for the jams, get involved. They are designed to be simple and free formed, but the require your input. If the jams don't work for you, get something going and invite me. Either way, lets build this community.
Colorado is my home. I don't want to have to move to Mt. Pleasant, IA.
feeling a little grumpy today,
-Steve
posted by stephenpcarey @ 12:53 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I'm glad I found this post (linked here from your post on coffeed), because I somewhat identify with what you're saying here. I say "somewhat" because I am not a pro barista and it would be unfair to say otherwise. I want to start a shop in Colorado Springs quite bad, but I am fearful of it for many reasons, some of which you point out. I consider the possibility of my love for discovering so many great coffees and how to "make them work (sometimes)" turning into frustration if I have to deal with the 20 oz / frappuccino / triple raspberry / extra hot / to go crowd.
Thanks to people such as you who are trying to do it right, this will change ... maybe not overnight, but it will change.
The notion of the Front Range being a coffee wasteland is a sentiment of probably most coffee types regarding their home regions throughout the country with exception to the PNW. Even NYC is really in the same boat with the excepton of a handful of shops.
I continuously contemplate moving to a more culinary aware place such as back to NY or to Oregon, but this place is now my home, and I really don't think I could leave. I just need to get off my ass at some point and make coffee my career - right here in CO.
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