I’ve launched a new column on Eater PDX featuring coffee roasters and shops around Portland. I love that it forces me to get out my camera and explore the dynamic spaces I sometimes take for granted. Barista Dave Tran is highly skilled; I had two capps and a shot from him, each extracted well and treated with love.
morning / Sellwood, OR / Either/Or
While it can slip over the thin line into withering zeal, earnestness is an underrated quality that many of us who are new, or just romantic, in the beverage industry carry. Whether it’s the way your eyes brighten and your voice rises when you share the story of how you ‘got into coffee’, or it’s how assiduously your cling to the early visions that sustained you in spite of the morass of normality surrounding, earnestness is a beautiful thing.
When Ben Vollmer of the nascent Flatlands Coffee in Bowling Green, Ohio, first reached out to me last year with what seemed an unrealistic Kickstarter goal of raising $60K for his ‘third-wave coffee shop’, I was struck by how refreshing it was to see young baristas like Ben and his wife and business partner Casey throwing down their hats into the ring without fear.
Because the reality is that life hurts us, systematically, rigidly, and with a heart-killing vigor. Once I had hope in many things. I thought it was possible for me to be a barista champion, a famous pianist, a femme fatale, a world-famous writer, a CEO—I thought I could be everything, and that the world would somehow hear of me.
Not that I’ve forgotten my dreams. Still, the daily living, the dish-washing and the child-rearing, the hell of traveling with a toddler, the sheer confusion of living in a strange city far from home, the intensity of forging a real, true, honest married relationship—these things have taken the edge from my earnestness at times. No less has the natural cynicism that comes from growing up in an industry and seeing might prevail over right, time and time again.
So today, I want to honor earnestness, in the form of Flatlands Coffee. Truth is, there are lots of third-wave coffeehouses. And each claims to be different while retaining, on the whole, homogeneity. Maybe Flatlands will be different. But I don’t honestly care. It’s not the gear on a counter that makes a coffeehouse great, nor is it snazzy packaging and social media savvy (though Flatlands has all of it by now, in its second, more modest Kickstarter effort). It’s not a great intro video, cool branding, and pretty faces (though Ben and Casey have all these things).
It’s earnestness. Intention. A simple lack of shame discovering passion. Being unafraid to throw your heart out there, with full knowledge that the cruel world—and people you know—might scorn it. It’s innocence and wisdom, enthusiasm and dedication, passion and stories, all wrapped up in one glowing face. Here’s to Flatlands Coffee, and here’s to earnestness all around us.
mid-morning / Redding, CA / Flatlands Coffee
Moving is soul-displacing. Familiar spaces and faces disappear and the heart wonders where they went. New streets, new habits, new patterns, have yet to begin, and you wander on the earth without leaving trails below your feet. Every person you see is a stranger. Every house a haven closed to you. Even the dogs and the cats, even the transitory folk who wander, even the raindrops that slide down your new windows–they all seem more at home than you.
I recently moved to Portland, from the wild concrete jungle of Orange County. My SoCal experience was short, three months at the outside, but for this girl who was raised in a small country house surrounded by cornfields and forest, it was revelatory.
Familiarity takes a toll on us, but so does newness. Here in Portland, in the city of grit and protest, I am thankful for the network of shared purpose in coffeehouses. While I may not be known, my passion for learning about origin and extraction is recognized, and between the barista and myself there flashes a brief moment of fellowship.
The beverage world is really about community–shared rituals, shared passion. Here in Portland, in the City of Craft Bev, I am learning that lesson all over again.
Portland, OR / early morning / photos from Broadway Cafe & Westport Rd. in Kansas City, MO
Vision. It was lacking, or rather sporadic, for me until recently. Until, actually, we became unexpectedly pregnant with our Little Alien and started having to get our shit together. In a few short months we left the cradle of Independence, MO, and embarked on a country-wide road trip to discover whatever it was we were meant to do in life.
What we discovered was how much we loved coffee and coffee people across the country. I had the same feeling this week while visiting San Diego. Cupping four coffees from around the world–an Ethiopia, a Guatemala, a Honduras, and a Papua New Guinea–in the light-filled space at InterAmerican, I felt that I had come home.
This community? It gives meaning and direction. Count me in.
–San Diego, CA / mid-morning / InterAmerican Coffee