November 97 — My favorite cafe in the Washington, DC area is the Java Shack. Campy, quiet, secondary-road, patio with many tables. Smoker-friendly, outside.

A beautiful sexy staff of passionate and brilliant intellectuals, starring super Dale, Duane a la carte, show-tune Jonathan, Speed racer Jenny, Jacques de la France, the mapever-delightful Samantha, Jeremy, & Tom. Coffee is creamy fabu Lavazza out of a Lavazza demitasse. #1 Small Business award by Arlington County.

Lots of new magazines and papers to read. Sunshine by day, table service at night. Show tunes and Barbra tinny from the outdoor speakers.

Everybody knows the words. Jonathan can name a Barbra song in one bar; everybody has a crush on Samantha. Light fare, chips, fabulous low fat (doesn’t taste it — I am pigging out on a bribe, a low fat cappuccino-choc and it’s bloody delicious and my lap is covered with crumbs) yogurt muffins, chai, tea, sandwiches and soups du jour. Lemonade. Caffeinated Water! It doesn’t get better than this.

Gay friendly. Dale spends lots of time and money supporting local and regional activities and even sponsors a bicycle team, Team Coppi. On Saturday, October 25th, the first-annual Java-Fest educates the community on “all aspects of coffee and espresso.” We Americans need that kind of education. Lavazza, Seattle’s Best, and Torrefazione are the coffee of choice for espresso drinks, coffee-of-the-day, and drip, respectively. “Team Java Shack,” 24 employees and patrons, completed the 10k Washington AIDS Walk, raising $2000 for The Whitman Walker Clinic in the fight agains AIDS.

The Shack publishes an internal organ called “The Java Shack Express” newsletter which gives advice on the happenings at the Shack as well as useful tips on how to store coffee. The baristas know your order and will add an item to the menu if you request it even a couple times. Seasonal gift baskets of demitasse, coffee, candy, etc, are often offered for sale at excellent prices.

There’s a Graham Webb cosmotology school up the street, so there are flamboyant and colorful tout en noir stylists sipping their capps while they hide behind dark Grace Kelly shades and gossip. I cannot quite place the clientele. Stylists, Arlington liberal yupps, area students, after-cinema dates. Not an arty crowd, but Arlington isn’t very arty. There is an excellent community bulletin board. The Java Shack really is invested in this community.

Indoors, the are comfy chairs and a coffee table. Chill out here all day and it’s no worries. People spread out here by day to study and talk and really nurse their drinks. An electronic canvas awning was put up and it is only used to protect against sun. Water ruins it. The newsletter states that there are plans to make the patio usefull well into the winter months. An enclosure or space heaters are in the works, so patrons will not be required to move indoors.

Hours are 7 AM to 10 PM Monday through Friday; 8 AM midnight Saturdays and Sundays. Festive wonderful place. Not my local because I live in the Hill in DC and this place is in Arlington, near the Courthouse Metro, Orange Line. Four stars. Three snaps. Sadly, no readings or live music, but there is a music school upstairs so you get to hear beginners hack away with their new axe or squeal on their blues harp.

Java Shack
2507 North Franklin Road
Arlington, VA 22201
(703) 527-9556
Dale J. Roberts, Proprietor

– Chris Abraham

First Coffee of 2000: Frozen Columbia Supremo beans ground in a Burr Grinder at a coarse setting, poured into a Bodum French Press, water added from the whistling kettle, let to steep for five minutes, and drunk slowly from a porcelain bowl. Black.

Sipping and sitting and petting the dog. Wearing a thick black terry robe, a Christmas present. Feeling lucky to not have a hangover, or having slept through it, it being very late morning. Listening to NPR on the stereo.

Letting the fresh grounds clear my head, letting the coffee sit in my mouth long enough to find my taste buds. Adoring my girlfriend who never has to nurse a hangover while hoping she would be so kind as to not say,

“I told you so.”

I never left the house the entire day until the night.

Location: Capitol Hill, Washington, DC
Time: 11:30 AM, 1 Jan 2000
Name: Chris Abraham
Occupation/Life Purpose: Coffee Drinker

Guerilla writing from dc.

The small apartment smells a little from the windows being closed against the humidity. I don’t have any place to put the butts from the ashtray and teaI really don’t want to waste my time doing domestic things anyway.

Time seems too valuable for that. But the job of cleaning now has become overwhelming. I hate living in an apartment and not on the road because messes remind me of stagnation. I am stagnating and the garbage reminds me, the ashtray, and the clothes I have to smell before wearing.

This is wearing thin.

My writing is going just fine, but I am not following Eastern Daylight Time, but Hawaiian Time. I have been awake since bright and early at 2:11 PM and shall go to sleep in an hour or so, around 4:30 AM. It’s certainly the typical hours for work in downtown Honolulu. Maybe Los Angeles. Okay, LA, but I’ll never admit to having to do anything with that place.

Seattle then. A place called never-never-land. A place so unlike Washington. Washington looks so deeply into the mirror. Washington is like a teenage girl. She notices every flaw and every ounce gained; she worried about everybody’s opinion and fears rejection, always believing herself (no matter how gorgeous) to always be the homelier.

New York is her older sister, the prom queen, the forever more popular to the studious insecure Washington.

Seattle just is. Whether the mecca for new technology or sustainability; or, as it is better know, for the romper room of the Generation X (and also the Generation Why as well as for Old Hippies and middle-aged Punkers). Seattle just is. The people explore their own trendiness with great seriousness and commitment. Whereas people from the seventies laugh off their bell bottoms and feathered hair, Seattle youth of the nineties (much more so than their suburban “Club Soda” brethren) shall be unable to secret their past shame in the attic, but shall be wearing it across their backs in inky faded wings. Or in a tribal tattooed arm band, in the scar of a clitoral piercing, brands, scarification — this is commitment, this is power.

But here, Washington looks at herself in the mirror and doesn’t want to be one-hair out of place; she doesn’t want to stick out; she doesn’t want to be snickered at by her friends. She doesn’t know what she is missing, the freedom of showing off the downy gleaming blond hairs of the tummy, the ellipse of the navel; to show the movement and form of the breast; to let the length of the body move under sunshine, under rain, beneath the incessant tirade of base and guitar. Pressed and exposed; excited and rosy from the blood coursing in the veins, breaking near the surface of the cheek.

And the ashes are constricting my chest. The smoke is no good for the chest. Seattle is cast under cloud by day, but at night the mist is nicotine and clove. Seattle is a Camel town. New York is Marlboro. Washington is a Marlboro Light town, by default to New York.

teaThe pale flanks of Seattle, tight from starvation. Striations of muscle, the glint of the rings, the glitter of the disco makeup, the high camp. The bell bottoms taken for a steal at a flea market, from the folk’s attic. The nosebleed platforms and ubiquitous coffee jitters.

Dimpled erotica painted on flesh with needle, wrapped like tentacles along the arm and down the back. Once, my head way held tight during a freedive. By a giant octopus, I shit you not. It took hold and its eight tentacles, each as big as my wrist. The suckers reeled down my arms and bare back. On one breath, I fought it. I used my knife to tickle it away and it disappeared in a cloud of ink.

I had been hunting for him so it was a fair loss, but when I arrived on shore, there were terrible welts where the genius had taken hold. They were read and indelible for quite some time, having broken the blood vessels, creating bruises.

The mark of the octopus from that day were as flowing and dynamic as the patterns dancing on the flesh of the Seattlite. Half-shirts, tank-tops, halter-tops, no shirt at all. The dancing of the image on the flesh; the tinkling of rings and jewelry. The clicking against the teeth as the boy absentmindedly plays with the silver barbell in his tongue as he pulls you off a shot of espresso.

Where can you get a good cup of coffee at 4 AM on Capitol Hill?

– text by Chris Abraham

Random reflections from sub pop rock city.

I took the bus from Bellevue after a teacher’s conference because it was turning out to be a very beautiful summer in a city I had never been. I came here to write coffee reviews and see what Seattle is all about. I am glad I waited because it was fun to see what Seattle was up to post-grunge (PG).

The scene is bubbling with buzzy drone-pop, sent over from the UK by Stereolab, Spiritualized, and Lush. (I couldn’t get either the new Stereolab or Spiritualized album anywhere on Capitol Hill!)

Attention. Grunge is passe in Seattle, but coffee is not, nor is Heroin. Neither are Vespas and Bandit motorcycles.

Attention. Seattle is a lot like London with Hills now – or is aspiring to be – and has not even tried to be like its cousin San Francisco or its stepmother Los Angeles. It went past New York and pressed its hypo directly into a British vein. Maybe not London, maybe Manchester – a fellow port town.

Funny because we had not a drop of rain.

The feeling of love is everywhere – but a demonic sort of love. It is a love requiring a body blue with tattoos and chiming with piercings. Love in a cage; a love temporary and desperate of open mouths and searching tongues.

The sort of love of groping children. A Samsara love… the love of never never land… the love of people so completely indulging their indulgences that 35 looks like 18 and 45 looks like 28 and the bodies lift and there are breasts and thighs and the buttocks and the movement is sensual and Samsara lives and it is a feeling of permanency of constant risk and constant highs.

With loud music and soft mummers; with willing kisses and smiles yet a desperation that time is passing and the skate rat might lose a knee; the hard-core punk might have a seizure; the junky might not be cool again….

In fact being a junky will never be uncool. Neither will the local espresso stand or the cup of joe. As a way to publicly take the edge off. And the coffee better be good because people meet each other at church in Seattle. NA meeting, AA meeting. Hello my name is C. Hello, my name is C. and I am an addict, I haven’t been to confession in three years.

Coffee is ubiquitous, but a ruse. Yes, people do drink the stuff, but its the least of the addictions permeating the goose-pimpled flesh of the Disco Queens and Liam & Noel wannabe’s. Pot is very strong and from Washington and British Columbia (the good stuff doesn’t come from Mexico but from Canada) and Ecstacy is available, but isn’t pure or very clean so people avoid it. It is China White. It is Tar. It is what makes you forget that your body is hamburger and your city has perma-rain.

This is not to say that the coffee isn’t superb! The coffee from the carts in Seattle is better than any of the coffee here in Washington, DC. It has to be, the clientele is very finicky, spoiled, and the competition is overwhelming. Any cafe with a weak shot or bad pressure or stale beans will quickly know what it is like to be put out of business. When I was asking around about where to go and what was cool I quickly realized that Seattleites are certainly connoisseurs of joe. But not just.

A friend mentioned that in a post university world, the only good place to meet contacts and lovers in a world of rugged individualists is at the NA meeting. Come here often? So, how many chips do you have? I am on my 7th!

Coffee is like Chamomile tea in Seattle. Soothing and non-invasive. It is pressed through an Italian machine and goes down in a hot sweet quickness. There is a perk there, but nothing along the lines of intravenous drug use.

A woman, a goth, said to me: heroin is the devil; heroin is the devil — it is what the devil is about: it consumes you and touches you with a gentle mouth like Sartre’s No Exit and the exit sign entering upon its infinite loop ad infinitum.

And so it goes. She said, I did heroin only once but think of him longingly like my first lover, my first real orgasm. An orgasm without parallel! The little death. It is the devil and it is so common, she says, and what is the most effed up is that is will always be cool: it is the risk: like the tattoos, like the Ducatis, like the single track or the mosh pit; like the late nights driving drunk.

Smack and drunk driving will ALWAYS be popular in the US because we rugged individualists love playing dice with the universe.

Our arms fly up and the larynx strains under the explosive mellow happiness of too many nights in the bar after hours where you and she and he and we descend the stairs with the blue smoke with the Kamel, with Radiohead playing in the skull and every detail noticed.

The feeling of exotica where the kiddies can decide never to grow up. My judgement: Seattle is where skaters; rockers; punks; hipsters; hippies; burnouts; britpoppers; funkies; bunkies and the like go never to grow up for there the supple navel the smooth skin made dark red like blood or the tail of the snake along the soft flesh of the arm under and alongside the smoothness of exposed breast. And the tongue and the thigh and the movement of a body under the influences of the Childish Game. And, you can never underestimate the power of a good cuppa.

– text by Chris Abraham

April 00 — One Italian barista, Sabatino, is caretaker of the Casa Italiana Italian Language School.

The espresso is sweet and creamy out of the dainty demitasse.

Orange is the color of choice.

Much of Sabatino’s time is spent not making the teas, the lattes, the espressos…

Take a walk into the ballroom cafeteria… a seat on “dirty mustard” hardback stackable chairs and round 8-top wood grain formica tables. The ornate room is half-hearted with cork panel ceilings, grotesque gold-tone-electronic chandelier. Original neoclassical canvasses surround the parquet floors. Florence landscapes, mirrored columns.

The Catholic magazines are fanned across the the top of the folding table.

Sabatino, the barista, serves Danesi Caffe in Heart-HAG demitasse cups. Danessi is imported from Italy, says Sabatino. The best, most authentic, pull of Roman espresso in the Metro DC area bar none (save possibly the Italian Embassy).

There is a commercial kitchen through the back of the corner bar — large gleaming vats for pasta… this is for real without pretence.

The espresso cost me a dollar. It was sweet. Delicious.

It is worth attending class here: learn some Italian, convert to Catholicism, or do what I do, take a class at the USDA grad school — a class in analog graphic design: what a perfect situation: sitting there with a T-square, a board, an X-acto, and round after round of doppio from Sabatino, who has a big toothy grin and a voice like Father Guido Sarducci.

Casa Italiana Cafe, Casa Italiana Italian Language School

– Chris Abraham

December 98 — The Cafe basement of the Elliott Bay Book Company, an independent, family-owned bookstore founded in 1973 by Walter Carr, is surrounded by books that are neither for sale nor slick advertisements; they are to be read.

The walls are brick and the chairs and tables feel like they were stolen from some university’s dining hall. The studenty feeling persists since this cafe is attached to the famous Elliott Bay Book Company, whose ecclectic collection of books make it one of Seattle’s favorites.

There is an online schedule of upcoming readings as well as a mailorder service (the latter is nothing formal, just a way for you to get in touch with the owners and tell them what you’re looking for).

logoThe cafe as founded in 1979. Despite the 20 years of practice, the point here is not the coffee, but rather the energy from the books. There is a full menu from which you may order soup, salad, and light meals. There is a large selection of juices, teas, waters, and soft drinks — and the coffee drinks are all under two dollars.

This is a smoke-free environment and Elliott Bay’s Cafe doesn’t let you forget it! When you arrive, walk over to the counter, grab a tray and start ordering; there is no table service available.

Beware: please purchase your books before bringing them to the cafe. The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers are available from a central rack if you need to catch up on current events. But you needn’t rush — you can probably read an entire novel here without being bothered.

Tom Robbins has called the Elliot Bay Book Company “a soulful establishment… that transcends the general neurosis of consumerism and the soul-deadening avariciousness of most commerce… [and] functions as a freewheeling literary clubhouse and public diamond mine.”

The Elliott Bay Book Company is located at 101 South Main St. in historic Pioneer Square. Cafe hours are — weekdays 9 AM-8 PM, Saturdays 10 AM-8 PM, and Sundays 11 AM-5 PM.

Elliott Bay Cafe
101 South Main St.
Seattle, WA 98104
phone: 206-624-6600
toll-free: 800-962-5311

– Chris Abraham

March 99 — The most comfortable cafe in Greater Washington. Easy chairs, couches, coffee tables, and an embarrassment of seating: under skylights, against the walls, and cafe style two-tops.

Their flyer notes that outlets are not to be used by patrons for their computers. What’s up with that? It has to do with liability and insurance. One circuit and lawyers.

Michelle loves the expansive “very well suited” to a cafe paintings that are on the walls. Abstract. She would consider putting the blue one ($500) in our home save for the price.

In their menu there are loads of warnings against camping. Funny, considering its gay run and gay friendly; but seriously folks, the first wrong step when you make a cafe as comfortable as Girogio’s, you are going to attract some cafe-dwellers. And we sit and stay. And if you kick us out, we ruin your rep. It works like a charm.

A pretty boy in leather chaps was my barista (I asked if he was a coffee cowboy and he told me, “no, I like boys who ride motorcycles) and he gave me the following numbers: a large cap, $3.15; a double shot of espresso, $1.75, a Chai, $2.75, a huge latte comes in at $3.15. Tea is a buck and cocoa is between $1.30 and $2.30.

Michelle loved her plain bagel (a toasted bagel is 75 cents and it goes up from there.), her odwalla, and I loved my latte and sweet danish.

I asked about soy milk and Rice Dream and Chaps said I was only the second one to ask and its a possibility should it become necessary… (moo).

There is an entire menu with the focus on focaccia. Everything hovers around a fiver.

Open 7am daily. Sit down dinner menu from 6pm Mon-Sat; Closes 10pm Mon-Sat, 8pm Sun.

The latte I ordered was smooth and creamy in an earthenware cup. The sign says that all waters used in the restaurant is quadruple-filtered and its a good thing since DC spent its earlier years as a swamp. DC water is still fetid and most of the other shops don’t filter anything save their drinking water.

A croissant plain is dollah quatah. Biscotti dolla ten.

The clientele is pretty affluent and preppy — no hipsters here. It lacks diversity and does not represent the greater DC area, but it is new and a little pricey.

There is no rush to move on and since its still cold outside I don’t appreciate the focus on moving on.

In all, Girogio’s lacks the kind of soul that Roasters on the Hill enjoys in spades, but then again, there is a lot to be said about a comfy cafe where the white male taking orders calls everyone hon and cutie and sweets. Where there are five-bill canvases on the walls and no incentive to jack in and write cafe reviews because of offensive lawyers and insurance men. The kind of place where folks might go before or after riding and where someone might get turned on to coffee in the way I am. We give the place two and one half snaps.

Giorgio’s
218 7th Street, SE
[North Carolina & 7th Street, SE]
phone: 202-547-7003

– Chris Abraham & Michelle Nolan

October 99 — Xando Cafe & Bar (now Cosi) 301 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE [between Pennsylvania & Independence] — Xando is the Reeses peanut butter cup of cafes and I am sure Starbucks is kicking itself for not thinking of it first.

By day Xando is a coffee bar, a proper serve-yourself-&-chill cafe but, by night (after 4 PM) Xando becomes a restaurant with full bar, table service and a smoking section. There’s even bossman-controlled hip contempo music that will neither insult nor offend its 30-something clientele. High energy and designed by the likes of the Wallpaper team. The peanut butter of daytime meets the chocolate of night and, voila! I hope it wears well, because its pristine first day could go downhill fast.

Xando Capitol Hill (right down the block from the shining rotunda itself) is shoe-horned into deep but narrow confined of a row house. This space was formerly a Sam Goody record store. My, what they have done.

Dark brown ceilings, textures black enameled exposed pipe, yellow-green curry-colored walls, and birch wood floors. Most table seating is on spacious plush sofas. The tabletops are miniscule and some folks are damned to be pressed between an active walkway and a wrought iron railing. The tabletops are too small.

Retro B&W photographs and abstract paintings feed the walls. The textiles covering the sofas are beautifully mismatched. The staff is friendly but nervous (first day), 20-40 something. A few children at a family table. It’s not the place where poets chainsmoke, drink mug after mug of java, and then move to Chablis in the mild afternoon, but it’s closer in a Parisian sort of way. If this is corporate sellout then we in America might be going the right direction. It feels more like a Public House than it does either a coffeehouse or bar. A coffeehouse suffers from lack of depressants and a bar only has that one put of sludge kept on the burner awaiting its rude drunk or Irish Coffee.

The menu is great beverage-wise. Food list is minimal: Panini, wraps, soups, salads, deserts. They look better than they taste. (I won’t mention the S’mores they can serve you at your table except that it’ll ensure the kind of attention from other patrons as you received at Farrells on your birthday when they sang and made a big fuss). Lighting is beautiful and honey-colored. I would pay my $6.00 for rent to sit in this living room with service… seven with tip: a double espresso ($1.60) and a slice of the pyramid chocolate cake ($3.95). 16 stores have popped up from Hartford all the way to South Beach Miami. 3 in NYC, 6 in Philly, three in DC, and three in Baltimore.

The cost of things is pretty much as expected. A $1.35 espresso of good quality is generally $1.20-$2.25 at most other places. The double is $1.60. I didn’t get the latte or the mocha, but there are three sizes: tall, giant, and gigante. Latte: $2.30/$2.95/$3.15; Mocha: $2.55/$3.20/$3.40; Drip: $1.25/$1.45/$1.55; Tea $1.00/$1.30/$1.60.

Full liquor bar and Beer after 4 PM and their hours are 7 AM 1 AM Sunday through Thursday and 7 AM 2 AM on the weekends. Smoking area and at the bar after 4 AM. Decaf and soymilk substitutes are available with all drinks.

– Chris Abraham & Michelle Nolan

August 97 — Bauhaus Books & Coffee is a sunny corner cafe with sidewalk seating. Poets write poetry in wire-bound journals, students study French. The Bauhaus, a split-level cafe, red bricked walls and a smoking loft. The interesting people smoke.

The coffee choices are extensive and they use Caffe Trieste coffee and offer PG Tips & Yorkshire Tea (for the homesick Englishman) as well as light fare.

The laptop user can find a table with a wall socket and the artist may well find the perfect light. All this aside, my double espresso was rich with a smooth topping of crema.

My English friend didn’t really enjoy his cappuccino saying he has had better in Seattle.

This said, the music is decidedly funky, the smoking loft is the place to be, and the staff is courteous. To boot, this is a used book shop and the entire side wall is a giant bookshelf with two rolling ladders.

Please purchase your books before you spend your late afternoon nursing your coffee — from what I have seen, the people here have been warming their seats all day writing, reading, perusing, and chatting over this and that.

My friend commented that the Bauhaus is certainly studenty and arty. I think this is a compliment to say the least.

Bauhaus Books & Coffee is located on the corner of Pine and Melrose.

– Chris Abraham

I have unearthed the old Caffeinated Magazine CaffMag coffee site that Maya and I made years and years ago. I am going to start posting all of the reviews I wrote back in the day to the CaffMag category.