Archive for category ‘happening elsewhere’
Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
never again will this blog wrangle with feelings of abashedment while floating hyperventilating conspiracy theories -- because, it turns out, exactly half of the blogging, western-european-isle-based, road-tripping barista duo is, in fact, hooking up with the burgeoning intelligentsia juggernaut of global espresso duress! (scroll down to find the news.) you ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007
it's at times like these, frankly, that this blog has trouble striking the right tone (there's a tone to this blog? you ask) -- or rather, avoiding the complete alienation of those readers (both of them) for whom good brew is simply a beverage, desireable, appreciated and on aesthetic par ...
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Tuesday, June 12th, 2007
a vague purpose for the road trip emerges.
[T]he roadtrip isn’t about cups of coffee, or at least certainly not in an evaluative way. It is about people, cafes, ideas and inspiration and having some fun.
mmmmmm-hmmmmmmm.
UPDATE: for bonus points, read the entire dispatch and pull yourself an overdosed triple ristretto ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | 11 Comments »
Sunday, June 3rd, 2007
video -- funny video -- of ancillary topics surrounding coffee fest atlanta is burbling up right here.
Posted in video, happening elsewhere, mad coffee jaunts | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
the lusty panama esmeralda, subject of so much swooning CI verbage, hath scored a fresh date with a seven-company coffee consortium that has purchased the 2007 auction crop for (deep breath, double-check the numbers) $130 a pound -- green. from the farm. or, if you prefer, $65,000 for 10 bags ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, subjective swilling | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007
moving pictures of evocative barista jon lewis playing espresso alchemist with a copper still and throwing around terms like 'conviviality'.
from this month's national barista smackdown....
Posted in video, happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007
detailed, spectator-oriented, lavishly illustrated u.s. barista championship coverage is now available. well done, but finished still incomplete more than a week after the fact.
(vital caveat: as with billy wilson and mark prince, this blog does not necessarily believe that recap author, competition judge and uber-home-junkie dan kehn should have been ...
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Monday, May 14th, 2007
alert: notable southeastern barista persons are propping greenville's c-n-c. whoohoo.
Posted in happening elsewhere | 4 Comments »
Thursday, May 10th, 2007
first it was "spirit"-ual cuppings. now it's barista-produced puppet shows. the groundbreaking coffee-evangelical ideas that CI readers continue to pull from the ether -- in the last 24 hours alone -- are nothing short of (sob) inspiring. shoulda sent 'em to long beach!
actually, 'twould seem to be more ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | No Comments »
Sunday, May 6th, 2007
this blog has long since ceased to hope for freedom from our 'spro machine's "tyranny of mechanical limitations" -- at least by the person who proffered the notion now more than a year ago. meanwhile, another fellow has modestly taken up the spadework, and now steadily offers nothing less than ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, levered device | 22 Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
whoa. vancouver's philip search conjures the loaded magic words re: barista competitions in the new youtubed mini documentary -- "underdog" and "financial backing!"
rest assured: this blog isn't about to pry open that can of festering folgers fish-bait again.
Posted in video, happening elsewhere | 2 Comments »
Monday, March 26th, 2007
'twould seem that the events of the coming week won't just be "critical for the future of ... southern africa as a whole", but could ease decades of tenuous zimbabwean coffee production, no? gotta believe mugabe's exit would boost the cause of south carolina's extraordinarily fortunate, zimbabwe-plantation-owning locals.
who, by ...
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Sunday, March 25th, 2007
as if you might not have picked up this blog's regular waspish moan that there's not much coffee 'roun' here. (we hadn't yet done it in digest form!)
course, there's nothing like subsisting in the desert to spawn desperate, rank spro innovation.
UPDATE: could it be that, indeed, sublimity is near? this ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | 10 Comments »
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
still more text messaging from the bush-bound, espresso-swilling blogfamily:
hurt my arm pressing coffee so went to a larger grind - less crema.
this blog asks: do you know anyone without electricity or running water who would go so far as to inflict masochistic self injury using pre-ground poo and a rudimentary ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007
this blog's burning question about billy wilson's theological positions -- answered in the current issue of imbibe! unfortunately, you gotta buy the 'zine to read the whole thing.
p.s. we'd heard about the piece before, and figured it fell into the coffee-is-cool-because-billy-has-tattoos genre of helpful but inadequate media exposure. we were ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007
there's that beguilingly frank memo from the starbucks chairman bemoaning "efficiencies of scale" that cost mermaid stores their "romance and theater" ... then there's the same company's plans to build 40,000 more stores!
adds heft to the notion that the (verified) communique' rings hollow, no?
p.s. can it be true that ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 7th, 2007
(... research wonks, or the voices in your head?)
"lies!" say a new crop of academian brits, who have just teed up a body blow to this blog's daily faith ritual -- by claiming that the morning brew only eases overnight chemical withdrawl.
"That alertness you feel is you getting back ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Thursday, March 1st, 2007
still more ominous signs of "middle americans getting squeezed" -- this time a resurgence in popularity for once-abandoned burger joints, at the expense of $12-meal-and-a-vibe establishments. which leaves $5 coffee .... where, exactly?
this blog has a fulfilling lower-middle-class job, yet we've recently been forced to cut magazine subscriptions, beach trips ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | 8 Comments »
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
... and they scoffed when this blog said that the pros are leapfrogging on the espresso research of amateurs -- and effusively so!
p.s. this heart-warming trend notwithstanding, we take one exception to jimmy's sublime account: schulman isn't really a "very smart man," he's just crazy enough to spend a weekend ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007
is it just this blog, or has it now become so common for hard-core amateur home-junkies to do the scintillating, labor-intensive and research-dependent espresso envelope pushing that the collective reaction of the professional community to these breakthroughs is, more or less ... "huh."
'course, that's not to say that amateurs always ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | 9 Comments »
Friday, February 9th, 2007
the entremanurial blogbrother, armed with little more than a mazzer major and a vetrano, has apparently scored with a couple chicago catering services -- dare we say the name 'hilton'? -- who have offered to promote his mobile espresso gig as an option for their clients.
and poof. just like that, ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
as if you needed a gaggle of seattle espresso drive-throughs to take the cult of the barista to its base logical extreme. in other news, an enviable west coast tour de cafe has tonx propping the self-same cult!
note: there is hope. also, decency. readers of the seattle times were, apparently, ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
the most striking detail in the denver westword's 6,000-word narcotic-and-whiskey-laced tome on the hunt for the original gesha coffee plant:
They are cruising down a road paved with coffee. Beneath their wheels, dried coffee cherries are strewn across the asphalt. It's a grassroots, four-wheeled de-husking operation, they realize, the road-killed remains ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Thursday, December 28th, 2006
the government of zimbabwe: moving on from agricultural ruination (read: coffee) to arrest indigenous gold miners. CI asks the paranoid question: does this mean coffee is now thoroughly toast?
longtime readers will remember that we here in the carolina hinterlands have actual zimbabwe coffee farmers living among us. we'll have to ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Monday, November 27th, 2006
this blog is deeply humbled to discover that what home-roasted sublimity it has discovered, by experience or by accident, is actually illegitimate! not worth the sale of cheap greens from pro to amateur! because, you know, excellence is kept under lock and key by certificate-toting triple-waveists. who knew?
of course, ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | 9 Comments »
Friday, November 3rd, 2006
billy has tattoos? who knew?
Posted in happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Friday, November 3rd, 2006
sometimes it's nice just to go somewhere and let your mouth hang agape like a 16-oz. capp cup. or something.
Posted in happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
six months ago, this blog first heard about jon lewis, the idahoan u.s barista championship finalist with a flair for thoughtful oratory and a bewitching euro subtlety in espresso beverages. and then, in a fit of unoriginal repetition, this blog called him "overwrought" at least twice. it was a function ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | No Comments »
Monday, October 23rd, 2006
catching a glimpse of billy's espresso pearls caviar, it turns out, is not unlike waiting for the mists to align in the form of an ardently sought female religious figure. trust us -- we've flogged the global interwebs on your behalf. what with the difficulty of an actual sighting, then, ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | 6 Comments »
Saturday, October 21st, 2006
it's not your amateur-driven muscular live-blogging, but day one of the northwest regional barista competition is expounded upon here. the private par-tays also don't sound so bad.
alas, this blog failed to unearth a travel sponsor.
UPDATE: finalists. competitor blogging. regular updates. but still no photographic evidence of billy's espresso pearls.
UPDATE: ...
Posted in happening elsewhere | 2 Comments »
