Ranting the Coffee Bean

Okay. I'm addicted to coffee, strong black coffee. I start every morning with a few cups of ground-daily dark roast (usually French roast) and then sometimes later settle into a coffee shop to read, write, think, etc. I also visit my local Arabic coffee store and get freshly ground coffee ground just about as fine as talc powder for Turkish coffee, which really puts stiff lead in my early morning pencil.

Back to the coffee shops...

I seek peace and quiet. I want to read, think, take out my fountain pen and start writing in my Moleskine. Oh, did I mention that I am easily distracted? I am. I'd say to the point of a disorder even. The slightest noise (like my former asshole crack-smoking neighbor who used to blast his fecking tv pulsating through the wall all night so the sounds of the city didn't wake him up) knocks me off kilter. Good thing I don't own any weapons.

Back to the cafes...

So lately, as I'm working through this photo funk I'm in, I've been hitting coffee shops. However instead of peace and quiet, I'm running into noise fests, noise so loud I can't hear myself swearing in my head. The customers are mostly sitting there quietly, along with me, trying to read, surf the web, talk quietly, but it's the employees making all the noise. I was at Caribou in Madison Heights last week, right there on the corner of 14 Mile and Campbell, and the two coffee wenches were talking it up, gaffaw-laughing, and belching out loud sentences over the sound of the espresso machine. They were utterly disgusting, and what they were talking about wasn't even interesting, mostly petty shit about how someone pissed them off and how they're going to get even.

Then I tried Starbucks, the one way up there in Auburn Hills, on Auburn Road and Rochester, Sunday morning. Same thing. So loud I had to leave.

Those areas where they prepare the caffeine laced drinks are mostly hard surfaces and bounce sound like a banchee.

I should probably just make a thermos of the stuff at home and go park in a local cemetery. Nobody seems to bother me there.