Friday, November 30, 2012

An Ode to the Coffeehouse

If you're paying attention at all, you'll notice that I post a lot of pictures on my people blogs from Gray Owl Coffee, a local place here in Norman. That's because I'm there all the time. 

Ironically, I'm not a huge coffee drinker.  I've never have been, but I love all the rituals that surround coffee and its consumers.  I love seeing my Facebook friends post about not having had their morning cup.  Part of me feels almost jealous that I can't gripe about the same thing. Not having had your morning swig of Diet Coke just doesn't have the same ring to it.* I love the smell of it, I love the feel of a warm mug in your hands, I love the variety of mugs people use to drink it, I love all the accoutrements that accompany the coffee: the cinnamon shakers, the raw sugar canisters, the little stir sticks.  I love all the pretentious kinds of coffee out there: latte, macchiato, espresso, iced coffee, Irish coffee, Turkish coffee, frappuccino, coffee milk (that was a favorite of mine when I was a kid, which is probably why, even though I don't drink real coffee, I can certainly stomach a latte with no issues whatsoever), cappuccino, mocha...the list is endless. Coffee drinkers are automatically elevated to Wordly Knowledgeable Individuals in my mind when they order anything other than say, coffee.  

Which brings me back to Gray Owl Coffee. Not only do I love the way it smells in there, but I love the groovy people that go there, the groovy music that is always going in the background**, the groovy furniture the use to decorate the place. I love the sound of the barista banging the used coffee grounds into the garbage and I love to hear the steamer heating up milk. I love that I can bring my daughter there to hang out and play backgammon and I love that my son has met girls there on first dates. I love that everyone from a 7-year-old to a retiree feels comfortable there. I don't love that I almost feel like a fraud, frequenting the place as I do and not being a real coffee drinker, but that's another entry for another day.   

It has a roving cast of characters, so I doubt I'll quite frequenting the place anytime soon, fraud status be damned. Here is Jenna, the woman is generally working the counter on Tuesday evenings, the night Libby and I go to hang out. She's in the process of making my low-fat pumpkin latte.  

Well...never mind.  Apparently I've run out of space on the allotted servers and can no longer post pictures unless I a)delete photos or b)fork over money to Picassa.  

Greedy bastards.

*Yes, it's true.  I drink Diet Coke in the morning. But I'm quitting. It's my 2015 New Year's Resolution.

**  

1 comment:

Carolyn said...

I have just spent a week in Mexico and OMG the coffee was FABULOUS. And I don't like coffee. But it was mild and smooth and ....

(Dos cafe con leches por favor!)