Finally, I can write you from beyond the shackles of my unfortunate incarceration, for crimes which I am entirely innocent. That entire time, behind bars, I craved a decent cup of coffee-one not produced or adultrated by Sysco in any way.
Ahhhh. The independent coffee shop. I used to love the places. Years back, in Los Angeles, Dear Reader, I was deeply engrossed in the so-called "Hair Metal" scene. It took something like two hundred cups of coffee a day to keep me functioning, because I could afford neither the cocaine nor the hairspray to keep up with the lifestyle. Suffice it to say that I spent time at now-legendary coffee shops like Java, and The Living Room. In this latter venue, a young Drew Barrymore sneered and turned her back at me, rather than make me a cappuccino, and I stormed out of the place, threatening to burn it down. True story, but they had great coffee, and comfortable couches. The fact of the matter is that each of these little places, scattered throughout the hipster neighborhoods of the cities, had its own personality. I remember the day I saw the first Starbucks in Los Angeles. I was impressed by the green colors, actually, not aware that one more aspect of culinary culture was about to be absorbed by the dull and lifeless tide of globalization/homogenization/banality. I finally left the scene, and the city, for Scandinavia, seeking revenge for many wrongs done to me, through Black Metal, but that is another story.
In Chicago, at the same time, we boasted something like twenty independent coffee shops of our own. Then, Starbucks came, like Christian Missionaries bearing smallpox infested blankets, and within ten years, we were left with three or four. All the others gave up the ghost, the competition with friendly green yuppie frappuccino being too much for them. One of the notable holdouts was a place called Filter, which is more than legendary, nowadays, as a place where Bohemians in the Wicker Park neighborhood used to hook up, and generally hatch acts of gossip and innuendo. It was a fine place, with an excellent menu of coffee drinks, some with names like "Purple Bhudda", and food that was two or three orders of magnitude brighter than the usual plastic-wrapped questionables available in the cooler of a Starbucks. One or sever of the owners of this place lost his/her (there were three, all crazy) lease, got lazy, or otherwise grew unappreciative of all the money I had invested in his/her motorcycles and cocaine habit, by consuming one overpriced coffee drink after another hatching memos like the one you, Dear Reader, are writing at this exact moment. Anyway, the old Filter is gone, long live the new Filter, resurrected farther south on Milwaukee Avenue, and in many ways superior to the old one. The old space was triangular and commanded an amazing view of "The Action", that being the crazy people and drunk club kids that meandered the intersection of North and Damen on every night worth going out. This new place has no view to speak of save the other patrons-but seeing and being seen was always the real meat of the Filter experience back then and it still is. This place has generously free Wi-Fi, for two hours at least with a purchase, a feature the old one lacked because some dickhead thought he could make money charging the patrons. That dickhead is probably still around, but he bought first rate restaurant equipment, hired people who genuinely know what they are doing (many were plucked from other notable coffee shops, such as the Mercury), spent some serious money crafting a nice space with sufficient electric plugs, and generally created a place worth hanging out, for hours, while finishing the liner notes to an album. In case it is relevant, because this is a culinary review, their coffee is amazing, and their food solidly good. Their chicken Caesar wrap particularly well-conceived and crafted, their turkey burger and Thanksgiving wrap much less so. Their tea selection is great, and their food runners much more effective than in the last place. Filter girls from the last place, if you are reading this, I dream about devouring each and every one of you sexually and cannibalistically. The current ones I am just getting to know, but the new counter is designed to actually serve food rather than to showcase the beauty of hot, sweaty, hipster chicks working behind a busy counter in close proximity. Sigh.
An unexpected and new coffee shop has sprung up just north of the place. The wormhole. It is a nostalgia coffee house, complete with a prop from "Back to the Future", possibly never used, a De Lorean fitted with time travel modifications. Hopefully, the owner will sell this waste of space, pay off his or her investors, and put tables in the window there. There are no window tables, and this is unfortunate. I also want him or her to pay off their investors because the place should stay here. This place needs some wear. It needs some stories. Its coffee is every bit as good as Filter's, and far better than Starbucks, if for no other reason than it is served in reusable cups, by efficient staff, in a timely manner. It includes Intelligentsia alums among its staff, a wise move, because these refugees know how to make coffee and handle volume. Intellgentsia, of course, is some of the best coffee this side of Portland, but the new means of producing drip coffee, one slow funnel at a time, take so long that many people are justifiably put off by the slowness of the process. Yes, I know that in my previous entries I have pointed out that the STRONG wait, the WEAK do not, but my time is damned precious, and I am not sure that the results at Intelligentsia are worth the wait. I digress. The artifacts at the Wormhole are amusing, but not necessary, and I hope the posters for The Goonies are taken down, one after the other, over time, and replaced by graffiti. In the meantime, I will go there often, precisely because they do not serve food to speak of, and because i enjoy the place. Both are welcome, both should be patronized.
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