Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 6, 1994 TAG: 9407070015
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jonathan Hunley
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"Do you like coffee?" she asked.
"OF COURSE I DO," I responded, having had the drink one time in my life.
I choked down that cup, and I've put away I don't know how many others since.
It was the natural progression for someone who had slurped watered-down Coca-Cola out of a baby bottle. (OK, it was actually Double-Cola - a discount brand - but I can't complain because it saved money that will probably fund my college education at W&M this fall.)
Anyway, I now believe myself to be a qualified caffeine fiend. And as such, I take my cups at Mill Mountain Coffee and
Tea in Downtown Big Lick.
The Campbell Avenue joint is one of the few Market-area establishments open at night, and it's big business among folks 18 and under. The manager and one of the owners told me they think Mill Mountain is popular because you don't have to be a certain age to get in.
I think my friends and I are repeating history at the coffee shop. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and the other beatniks of long ago understood these ideas when they were 21.
Why didn't they hang out in bars?
Because they knew the special feeling of The Sharing of The Bean.
Let me explain.
A complete understanding of the operation at Mill Mountain can only be had after looking at what I call the Three P's. (Well, you might as well say four - because after drinking all that coffee, you're bound to have at least one on your own.)
Nevertheless, The Place, The Provisions and The Patrons are what get your attention here.
First, The Place.
As you walk inside, tables crowd the left side of the room. On the right, behind a large wooden counter, employees hawk various forms of stimulant, including coffee products and sweets chock full of chocolate and sugar and fat.
Different pieces of art are featured regularly on the walls. I don't know much about those, though. I may be a coffee connoisseur, but I'm not an art critic.
Next, The Provisions.
You need to know what to have when venturing on a caffeine voyage.
Regular coffee is best consumed, I think, with one sugar - if anything at all. I usually use Sugar In The Raw when I'm at The Shop (this is what my friends and I call the place). On the wrapper it says: "Made from the initial pressing of raw cane." It has a brownish-blond color because "molasses remains in the crystals," which of course gives it a "robust flavor."
I don't know about all that, but I know it's expensive, so I use it there, and the old white standby at home. More college money, ya know.
The Shop also has Italian sodas, which are worth mentioning because most every other teen-ager in town orders them. They're made with carbonated water and flavored syrups. But they aren't caffeinated, so they're not really for me.
I like espresso. If you don't know, it's made from a fine grind of coffee packed into a machine that forces steam through it. The result: a coffee two to three times stronger than usual, served in a precious, itsy-bitsy cup. It's so dark and thick I swear they pour it out of a Quaker State can.
I usually order a double - one with an extra shot - which gives active teen-agers the get-up-and-go they need.
However, once I had one of these at about 10 p.m., and I went home and channel surfed like mad for about 20 minutes. I was so wired I couldn't stay on one channel for any length of time. Headline News to Sportscenter to Alan Jackson to Alternative Nation. They all blurred into one image.
As fun as these antics are, they remind me of a sad fact. Drinking coffee signals the end of childhood. Gone are the days when I had enough energy to get things done on my own. Now, I'm in the adult world where you don't get enough sleep and have to run on coffee-pilot half the time.
Finally, The Patrons.
The adult crowd - attorneys, architects, accountants and the like - is there. But next to these three-piece business suits, you'll also find four-color grunge flannel. Beside diamond-studded cuff links, you'll discover 14-carat-gold nose rings.
Teen-age customers run the gamut from mainstream to alternative. Hippies, punks, skaters and generic rich kids go there.
My favorites of all, however, are couples. They usually consist of a beautiful girl - who, being beautiful, probably wouldn't date me if I owned the place - accompanied by an oaf of a guy, named something like Biff, who tries to pitch himself as cultured but ends up ordering an Italian soda because he can't pronounce anything else on the menu.
This sort, the "cool people," will never understand the meaning of a coffee shop. They will visit many such places only because "the crowd" does.
As for me, I go to The Shop because it's one of the few places that will allow you to be yourself.
You don't have to dress up to go there, and you can be silly and obnoxious and no one will say anything.
These places seem to be rare nowadays.
Of beans, beatniks & the 'buzz'
by CNB