Crazy in Love
I dunno, maybe I'm crazy... and kind of a hipster (ee gads no! a crazy hipster!) but, my friends, I must confess that... I am in love!

Since it opened, I have regularly patronized to the Blue Bottle Cafe for my latte and general bean juice needs... as many as 3-4 times a week. Also, I love the fact that I can pick up beans roasted only a day before (!!!) and bring them home to be fresh ground at my leisure, and french pressed for a full and delicious flavor. If SF has imparted any kind of strange hipster-ness upon me, it would definitely be this obsession I now have with coffee.

I must admit, though, my love had very early beginnings. At the mall near my home (the Santa Ana Main Place Mall), there was a specialty coffee shop that was long and narrow. It lead you through from the main shopping area to the food court ...almost like a secret passage! When inside, not only were you completely surrounded by delicate tea sets and fantastic colorful mugs, you were also immersed in the smell of coffee. Various roasts were stored along the walls and the smell could almost overwhelm a person. Often my dad would walk through, all too briskly, as a short cut to the food court. I would lag behind, feigning interest in a pretty cup or tea set so that I might linger within that warm comforting atmosphere.

I did not get to try coffee until I was in the 7th grade. After mass, outside under the arbor of my church, they sold coffee and donuts to fundraise for St. Columban's service organizations. Thinking coffee to be a more pure and intense form of chocolate, I had a crack addict's craving to get my hands on a cup. Obviously I now realize the cocoa bean and the coffee bean are not one and the same, but at the time I was misinformed. At 12, I had already developed a taste for extremely dark chocolate, liking to suck on small pieces of bakers chocolate when making cakes with my grandmother. So to me, coffee seemed a natural progression at the time.

I was out of the service early, as I was part of St. Vince de Paul organization and I had to be prepared to collect donations at an assigned door when mass got out. A classmate, Gloria Marufo, had slipped out on church early and was sitting by the food spread. She, an anomaly in my sheltered life, always more learned and experienced than I, sat casually by the donuts sipping a Styrofoam cup. She had informed me that, "Of course it was coffee!" and looked at me like I was such a kid (which of course I was). But I was emboldened by the casual way she sipped her drink and thought to myself, "If Gloria can handle this elicit adult's beverage, well... so can I!"

Coffee had been forbidden to me given it's high caffeine levels and the fact that I was already an extremely hyper active kid. Of course, that made the allure all the stronger. I was exhilarated when the old church lady did not stop me (I half expected her to) as I paid my dollar for a cup. I turned to the urn of coffee. Next to it sat the hot water urn that only a week prior I had been wholly content to pour from for my 75 cent Swiss Miss packet. This week, I had decided, would be different.

And it was, I immediately spat out the bitter product of what had to be week old coffee grinds left out to dry in the hot desert sun. Gloria laughed at me and pointed to the box of sugar cubes and packets of creamer. Logically you would think I would give up on something that was both vile and forbidden. Instead I became more determined, I would like this drink and train myself to enjoy it unadulterated. In the mean time, I plunked in 5 cubes and several creamers so as to make it bearable.  

And thus marked the beginning of the end. After 12 years, two barista jobs and countless dollars spent, I can only say my love of coffee has grown into... I'm not sure what haha. But yeah, the point of this post was to state I'm going to BBC for brunch with Nick, and as usual, I'm super excited about it. I wanted to go on about BBC and it $20k coffee syphon bar (from which I plan on having a pot in a couple of hours), but I guess I'll do that later when I'm much less tired and delirious from my reveries down memory lane.