there are now a few dents in the butcher-block counter and some shop regulars who join bar conversations like they’ve been kicking around for years. the low-tech pastry display — glass-domed saucers — seems a stroke of budgetary genius for the juicy baked goods therein. they attract quite the longing gazes. patrons are beginning to nod at one another, and the smell of concrete veneer is gone. the new forest park installation of coffee and crema, in other words, is starting to really feel like a place.

you wanted to suck in your breath and cross your fingers when shannon took the dive and wrapped his life into a freestanding shop. the mall kiosk had put him on the map; the full-blown retail shop might well wipe him off of it — or become the first real espresso gathering spot in greenville, the best thing in coffee for 150 miles. quite the gamble, it felt like. not that this blog is privy to the books. just the sweat and tears.

we were, initially, skeptical of the commercial, non-pedestrian space. but then most of the cozy cafes in the heavily walked corridors of town have all gone spectacularly bust numerous times over, and without so much as a wistful hiss of a decent spro finishing its pull. it’s greenville, after all. folks like their consumption in large, dedicated spaces with ample signage. shannon is negotiating the difference, and seems like he could pull it off. there are streams of steady business — nearby tech-school students have no other options, it turns out, nor do conventioneers a half-mile in the other direction. great. get ‘em in. bring your friends. join a cupping.

the gleaming gb/5 is a rightful rock star in these coffee hinterlands. the gaggle of nascent baristas are learning a craft from scratch, and wide-eyed. we hear there’s a van — a van — of better-known coffee persons cruising up the interstate for this week’s inaugural event. media coverage, too. and this blog, if it hopes to avoid more limp latte art embarrassment, had better start acquainting itself with an explosive commercial steam wand it has never had reason to use.

latte art throwdowns are so last year. hoedowns, though…

lewis, of course, is in colombia for this week’s national coffee competition as CoE’s newly installed “membership liaison.” sources tell CI that he actually saw the iron maiden airplane on the bogota tarmac. (first of all: TEH IRON MAIDEN! TEH IRON MAIDEN! secondly: don’t look, jon! you’re here to liaise with, you know, members!)

within hours, police were arresting “malcontents” who wanted concert entry “without tickets.” coincidence? we think not!

the only way out of this mess, as far as this blog can see, is if jon could somehow claim he was safely ensconced at the time in front of his computer screen, watching the united states barista championship … hmmm. looking at the time stamps, it’s a plausible alibi!

UPDATE: key quote:

rioters will have to “assume the costs of the stoplights and traffic signs that they damaged without just cause.”

stiff! still, this policeman seems to be implying that there could, indeed, be a “just cause” for tearing down traffic lights. in colombia, this may be true! and so this blog asks you, if a band of heavily haired, jangly-armed 1970s british rockers isn’t just cause, then what is?!?!

high-end coffee people tend to be one of two types: exceptionally nice or total jerks.

funny ’cause it’s true! you might even host a shot-gulping game in front of today’s live video stream of the u.s. barista championship, indexing all the “i’s” and “me’s” against references to the, you know, actual coffee.

one shot of espresso per five self references, say. we’re shooting for an overall barista ego score of deliriously shaky!

UPDATE: nice guy wins.

no, this blog had nothing to do with the placement of this story. it came via the chicago tribune‘s wire service, and apparently qualifies as vitally interesting to the local demographic. in greenville, south carolina. in march. on the section front. next to st. baldrick and the incontinence ad.

Bridal Shower

by George Bilgere

Perhaps, in a distant café,
four or five people are talking
with the four or five people
who are chatting on their cell phones this morning
in my favorite café.

And perhaps someone there,
someone like me, is watching them as they frown,
or smile, or shrug
at their invisible friends or lovers,
jabbing the air for emphasis.

And, like me, he misses the old days,
when talking to yourself
meant you were crazy,
back when being crazy was a big deal,
not just an acronym
or something you could take a pill for.

I liked it
when people who were talking to themselves
might actually have been talking to God
or an angel.
You respected people like that.

You didn’t want to kill them,
as I want to kill the woman at the next table
with the little blue light on her ear
who has been telling the emptiness in front of her
about her daughter’s bridal shower
in astonishing detail
for the past thirty minutes.

O person like me,
phoneless in your distant café,
I wish we could meet to discuss this,
and perhaps you would help me
murder this woman on her cell phone,

after which we could have a cup of coffee,
maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,
face to face.

and so the surreptiti-blogger tacy made a rather pointy point while this blog was out about the black hole that is … well, it’s a black hole. thus lacking basic tenets of existence. and the hole that is, currently, black might otherwise be described — if it did exist — as a real authoritative resource on which to base your espresso purchases. a junkie’s black book of spro. an “espresso review,” if you will.

shockingly, this blog finds itself in abject agreement. alas, tacy’s blog seems only to want our cash tips, not our nods and comments.

perhaps many willing drinkers don’t immediately hew to the idea of quality coffee because quality is so elusive. not only does it vary within a single cafe, from barista to barista, but it varies amongst those espresso blends that this loose coalition of internet junkies recommends as “good.” much of this seems based on buzz. why not something a wee bit more empirical?

of course, taste is contextual. this blog can almost guarantee that your spro will taste worse if you’re studying for an exam about sock-drawer fungus, for example. still, we might just venture out and pay exorbitant shipping fees for a pound of someone’s ballyhooed house blend if a trusty rating agency told us it was, say, “better than cats! five thumbs up!”

we nominate standard & poor’s. oh, wait.

we’re not sure who the excitable hyperventilator is who thought blueberries grew on vines. but a good quote! and strangely perfect for shannon’s poster campaign to foist the ethiopian korate on the unsuspecting world …

the effusive words from barista magazine, penned by daynjah dan and ellen donnelly, live on — just above the napkins and sweet-n-low!

which would be sarah palin big, no? like a visit from a person with a beehive, just not on her head!

it seems logical to assume a bit of jiggy latte art would be in store at thursday’s bash. maybe a whole string of jiggy latte arts done in ONE SINGLE POUR into cups lined up the aforementioned champion’s beary hairy forearm.

ahhh, scottish people. we’ve always thought that no party is complete without them. and their beards.

at least, that’s how we remember the conversation. next thing you know, solis jake is involved and shannon’s mall kiosk is festooned with uber-posters promoting the whole bean. wait, what?

simple, massive taste illustrations to grab your attention. pithy endorsement quotes, just like the movies. an attached, explanatory placard proclaiming, “it’s coffee,” to drive home the point. it’s coffee, yes. staggering, jiggy and snorkalicious coffee, if you ask this blog.

we understand that mall patrons are having difficulty passing by without a gawk or two.

hmmm, lessee. nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope and nope. conspicuous!

UPDATE: it was a counter culture thing! note to lamont: the zombie would have never kept us in the dark like this …

note: the above link doesn’t go to the blog itself. for “rod thoughts,” click your way from the home page. top left.

what will these studly taste geniuses think of next — that is, when they get back from trotting around colombia hulla for their rare, cold-cupped beans? espresso massage? supraspro? milan-grown “terrace” varietals?

key quote: “yes, it truly can.”

(hat tip, reader X)

p.s. reminds this blog of a whiskey-drenched coffee profile we read once …

p.p.s. question is, is rod lazar ripping off barack obama, or is obama ripping off lazar?

UPDATE: strange. this blog’s rss reader tells us that the world barista champion wrote about this very taste guru with his customary restraint (“My new favourite site ever“) sometime yesterday. but, ah, the post would appear to have been “moved.” not a fan of “killer so-spro,” james?

UPDATE: one thing that gnaws at this blog, late at night: that one day soon we might become a coffee snob … driving people away with our insufferable inscrutability. but that’s why rod lazar gives us hope. the true snobs, they’re all offended!

UPDATE: that thompson owen, of sweet maria’s — you know, the one with the “driest sense of humor on the planet” — is either strangely obsessed or intimately acquainted with that ista-bar czar, rod lazar.

alas, the coffee juggernaut in this case is showing a creepy propensity to buy your favor with cheap status tricks! the times’ ron lieber cheerfully shows us coffee-drinker status-seeking at its most egregious:

“…the goal is to keep buyers from straying, by offering, say, an elite status with special perks that they must qualify for each year.”

because, you know, it’s just so hard to compete with taste.

“It’s amazing this stuff works so well,” Mr. Lipp said. “What we’ve found is that people can be bought for a cookie.”

including, apparently, the author of this piece:

“Rewards are nice, but recognition is better. So if I’m one of Starbucks’s best customers, I want to have elite status, as I do on American Airlines. I want shorter lines, better freebies, special seating (Aeron chairs, preferably) and electrical outlets reserved just for me and my laptop.”

points for brutal self-effacement! alas, cue the painfully familiar CI screed about why a taste revolution IS granular — slow and painstaking, not easily turned into a mass movement.

these status-inflators create waves, but sort of, you know, obscure the point, eh? true taste trickles in your mouth a little bit like a droplet of coffee surprise. or something.

so we covertly jammed in the left ear bud, scrolled around for the archived awards video — taking care to not erroneously click the great florida healing revival — and pretended to consume the drama live and loud. it was 5:38 p.m. and we were coughing loud, unnatural cubicle coughs that sounded a lot like the guttural utterance, “schanikes! it’s kyle!”

we hate to imagine the lack of caring you may have for this perspective. you had live video, you might snarl. what more could you demand from your rocking sloth’s chair?! alas, you’re right. we deserve nothing, we far-flung fanboys — and yet we finally got specialty coffee convention coverage to swim in. not independent-minded commentary, or quite public-oriented reportage, but indeed a giant leap in the direction of outreach. openness. community.

we guess there’s hope for this club. now someone just write the words somewhere online: “kyle glanville, u.s barista champion.” so we can find them.

a minute later … it was written, in the bowels of this place, at the moment we finished this post. don’t tell this blog it doesn’t have eerie mind-bending powers …

* and on the third day, the official blog of the national coffee smackdown got some soul. some lumpy, globally conscious, quasi-relevant meta-soul. we now agreeably recommend it and wait for twitchy to snottily up the ante. (UPDATE: more meta here.)

* if you’re a creepily juggernaut-ish chicago espresso powerhouse, and you own six of 24 semifinalists, does putting two of them in the finals count as a win, a loss or a draw? do you huzzah because your odds have improved? do you weep over the .333 batting average? or do the sweets and the bitters complement, like an optimally balanced espresso score sheet?

* you knew this already: watching a barista competition tells you nothing. gauging the live online patter all day, you’d think the smoothest operators were, in this order, albina’s billy wilson, intelligentsia’s mike phillips, aldo’s belle battista and octane’s danielle glasky — none of whom made the finals. as in politics, you might think this defeats the purpose of punditry. but you’d be wrong! uncertainty breeds punditry, friend. like gators in a swamp.

* so ben helfen is cokers for finland, yes. so much so that he gratuitously weaves it into conservation. but look, when you find a way to wear the finnish flag during competition, you can’t lose! it’s like a global job advertisement! HIRE ME PLEASE!!! a wild guess: ben will arrive in ideal european coffee climes long before the rest of us dreamers.

*watch for ‘em in the finals: gravy boats. bouillabase basins. saucy skiffs! when it comes to barista gear, they’re the new anfims.

actually, no. th’ feeds, we’re swimmin’ in ‘em.

* noted: that blogging spasmodic girl is playing all five scaa bloggers to a draw, when it comes to value-added hilarity. “solid and woody” indeed. also, “pudding-like body.” the blogette’s secret sauce: hotel pool?

* those semi-finalists: eight of them — fully one-third of the next round — come from within a two-hour stretch along lake michigan (UPDATE: well, ok. they’re affiliated with establishments in that nexus). the only solace: someone else wins.

* we know one thing about octane’s danielle, who leaped into the round of 25: her spro is somewhat microcosm-esque. (yes! another gratuitous homage to the barista-poet in absentia!) a smidge of the stuff left at our place last month wowed this blog with light, malty sweetness, like a frothy shake with toasty sugar spikes and scents of the berry of rasp.

* tomorrow, this blog and c-n-c’s shannon hudgens finally join in the USbc — as in, just us! at a coffee bar! trying to one-up live streaming competitors on teevee with impromptu sigs and heaping doses of solemn pretension!

sssnggxxttxxssszzzz.

maxims for life from the u.s. barista championship, day one:

* live, streaming video of barista glitterati in action — even hiccuping video with warpy sound — is flabbergastingly more compelling than youtubed competition videos. clips: eh. everybody does it and nobody endures them all. but the stream — tha stream is happening right now. it’s irresistible.

* that messy, snarky, meandering fanboy commentary that unraveled today alongside the moving pictures — it’s a taste of community. an extension of the convention ruckus for snivelling homebodies like this blog. simple, haphazard — and vital!

* do not, however, make slighting remarks about competitor 27 while his father is watching the feed. don’t. baaad.

* all this glorious electronic carnivality — lost in the bowels of these interwebs. why no archives? this blog looked into ustream a year ago for this very use, and happens to know that archiving the video is entirely possible. relive the ignominy! re-chew the cud! seems like competitors might want to obsess at some point over the world’s reaction to their routines …

* the house blog is of interest, if a bit promotional. more narrative! more dot-connecting! or, you know, at least some humor — with writers’ names connected to the blog posts. how else will we know if hoffmann is working, or merely practicing what we call in the profession “celebrity journalism.” sordid. inexcusable. (UPDATE: names now attached! is it just us, or if hoffmann getting all the sweet assignments?)

* for pure words, those writerly types just can’t be beat. twitchy wins this blog’s eyeballs for cogent, relevant convention narrative.

* is there weed going around the competitors quarters? or does octane’s ben have another explanation for this brief spate of giddiness?

but it’s … so … hard.