With recently-opened locations in Montlake and Wallingford, a two-year birthday celebration for its original location on our own Capitol Hill, and, as the 2007 recipient of the Greater Seattle Business Association's New Business of the Year award, Fuel Coffee and its owner Danielle Cone have clearly created something special. A visit to their flagship location on 19th Avenue East demonstrates just that.
Cone's success, however, speaks to more than just a shrewd business model, her eye for logo and graphic design or her discerning palette. It speaks to our values as a neighborhood and city that no amount of critical smugness, homegrown or foreign, can diminish.
Indeed, the fact that a new café could find its niche among the already grind-saturated Seattle market and simultaneously elbow its way in to make a place astride the broad-shouldered corporate coffee behemoths that stand on nearly every street corner acts as a telling temperature-check for the city as a whole.
It testifies to our continued embrace of egalitarianism and our embrace of paradox: relaxation through speed.
Self-satisfied critics of Seattle coffee culture often point to the $5, create your own, multiple-modifered latte as evidence of our supposedly high-brow, raised-nose, ivory-tower culture. And while the lengths to which some customize their coffee drinks can reach deep into the absurd (I recently heard someone specify the temperature of the drink. No, not "extra hot" or "cool" but "195 degrees." Yep. He actually specified the exact temperature.), these critics miss a more important point.
Coffee is the drink of the masses. And a cup costs just over a single dollar.
When coffee replaced beer as America's preferred breakfast beverage in the late 1890s, there was no turning back. Ranch-hands, farm-hands, miners, politicians, professors and authors all drank coffee.
Today, that coffeehouse cup of joe provides not only its enlivening contents but also an environment to enliven in. Conversation, reading, flirtation - the coffee shop encourages each of these and the coffee itself, both its price and its ubiquitous availability in this city, offers each one of us the opportunity to partake in a social custom that dates back to at least the 14th century.
In Italy, for instance, espresso is hardly bemoaned as the drink of the upper-classes or as a sign of wealth or status. Instead, it's an every-person's drink no less or more so than their famous wine.
Fuel's success speaks to our city's egalitarian values. No matter your class, your race or your beliefs, everyone is equally welcome and able to linger over a steaming cup and learn the truism of a famous Turkish saying that describes a perfect cup of coffee, "black as night, hot as hell and sweet as love."
At the same time, the centrality of centrality in the Seattle psyche also highlights a way of living seemingly unique to this city. As referenced above, this means relaxation through speed.
As a central nervous stimulant, caffeine always comes with an implicit warning label: might cause restlessness, nervousness, sleeplessness and insomnia. Indeed, it's addictive and withdrawal is, frankly, utterly unpleasant. Were it not for the distraction alcohol and tobacco provide, I'm convinced the Surgeon General would set its sights on it.
But somehow the contradiction in terms between relaxation and speed finds its resolution in our city's culture and, judging from Fuel's success and the continued success of its counterparts, that resolution continues unabated.
Perhaps this resolution somehow counteracts the gray rainy days Seattle is known for. Perhaps it's just a liquid version of multi-tasking inspired by our home-grown technologies. (Like Windows, we can run our relaxation and speed processes simultaneously.)
Whatever the reason, our love of coffee and its apparent paradox add to our complexity makes us a bit ambiguous and difficult to figure out.
Do we contradict ourselves? So, we contradict ourselves. We contain multitudes.
Mario Paduano's column appears in the third week of each month. He can be reached at editor@capitol hilltimes.com.
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