What Is It About Coffee Shops?

Landon Pigg "Falling In Love At A Coffee Shop"

Today, a friend and fellow Blogger published a blog post about losing love and coping with the aftermath. She wrote about how she always imagined that one day she and her lost love would meet up at a coffee shop, reigniting the sparks and starting anew. When I read this, I immediately thought of myself (egotistical, I know). I realized that whenever I have a fantasy about meeting Mr. Right or running into an old flame, looking fabulous and far skinnier than I do in real life of course (it is my fantasy, after all), the fantasy always takes place at a coffee shop.  I couldn’t help but wonder, what is it about coffee shops?

Now, before I go any further, let’s just get the big, mocha colored elephant out of the way. Yes, I love coffee. And lattes. And mochas. And Chai. And…well, you get the idea. Hell, I have two blogs and both reference some incarnation of coffee in the title. I am a girl who likes her hot beverages. This, believe it or not, is irrelevant when it comes to my love of a good coffee shop. These days, drinking coffee and frequenting local coffee shops has become a way of life. It has created a distinguishable group of people –like hipsters. Actually, almost exactly like hipsters, only coffee shop frequenters are not tied in to exclusively wearing skinny jeans. The coffee-loving community even has a loosely defined class system. For example, I don’t know how many times I have seen people in my local coffee shop climbing on top of their soap boxes to preach the evils of Starbucks and the kind of “unoriginal, faux coffee drinkers” that frequent such a billion dollar establishment. I do not fit into this category. Yes, I love my local coffee shop and I would much prefer to hang out there for a day of reading, writing, and chatting than at Starbucks. This said, I would not want to be the person blocking my path when their Pumpkin Spice lattes come out every autumn. They are delicious and I don’t care who knows it. But I digress…

Coffee drinker or not, there is something magical and romantic about a coffee shop. Maybe it has something to do with the widely accepted correlation between coffee shops and book lovers, both of which I happen to be. I personally cannot think of a group of people more idealistic and, let’s be honest, pathetically romantic than we book lovers. You’ve seen us –the people who forgo the season’s hottest fashions in order to afford our book hoarding habit and coffee shop bill. We are the ones sitting in the corner of the café, bookstore, or library with our heads in our books, ignoring everything but the pages in front of us, breaking only to quickly sip whatever beverage happens to be in front of us or grab a highlighter. The coupling of a good book and a hot mug of coffee, or even tea, is poetry incarnate.

As a freshman in college, while my friends went out partying or took part in social clubs, I sat in a coffee shop. Everyday, rain or shine, I sat in that coffee shop with a book, my laptop, and a continuous stream of coffee until the shop closed at one in the morning. I became a regular there, learning the names of the baristas and claiming a favorite spot. The faces of the other regulars, whether I spoke to them or not, became a part of my daily routine. When the tall Indian man with the beret wouldn’t show up for his large latte with extra foam, I imagined what he was doing and how he was going to get his caffeine-fix that day. When the young lovers, who always sat huddled in the darkest corner to kiss and hold hands while pretending to do their homework, broke up, I wondered who would get custody of the table. And when the PhD student, who came in every day with his friend to order his regular Americano, asked me to come over and watch movie, I gave him my heart for three years. It had finally happened. I had found love in a coffee shop, just as I had always imagined. In the end, my three-year love affair with Dr. Americano did not work out. My love affair with the coffee shop, however, is still going strong.