hello U S and A.

so its been 1 month and 1 day since john buck turned 29. its no coincidence that is the date of my last blog post. call me lame, a slacker, uncommitted, whatever. i'll take it all, gladly accept it, and consider this my return to blogging.

in the last 6 weeks i've been to denver, buena vista, knoxville, eureka springs, cedar rapids, madrid nerja and granada...with layovers in paris, atlanta and detroit. also i've spent a bit of time in kansas city, not that anyone would know that. my own roommate hasn't seen me for half an hour in that time frame. in the next 4 months i have relatively no plans to leave my city. so you can also consider this my homecoming.

i've finished reading zero books and have digested zero albums in that span too. relatively pathetic. i've made some serious headway on the devil's cup though. it's a narrative about coffee, or a 'history of the world according to coffee'...where it came from, why it came from and what that means to the world. this guy goes on a pilgrimage following coffee's past - starting in ethiopia and yemen (where coffee originated). its amazing to me. probably wouldn't entice many of you. but for those of you who give a rip about the elaborate cup of dirty caffeinated water you drink each morning...you might find it interesting at least. he talks so much about the importance that each cup has to the area and how it was created. makes me sad that american coffee equals burnt corporate starbucks coffee when the rest of the world has such interesting regional cups. oh well.

oh and i almost got stuck with the gypsys in spain. you can read about that adventure here. and you can learn more about gypsys here.

also, if you're ever having a crummy day, or if you have a long drive through the middle of the night, put on some huey lewis and the news, it'll cheer you right up.

-ap.

please don't stop buying coffee.

when i went to guatemala a year ago i got to have a conversation with a coffee farmer there. he was talking about the long hours he works farming on the mountains and how it barely is enough to provide the bare minimum for his family. i started to feel guilty about drinking his coffee every day and not appreciating it. i told him this and he said,

"whatever you do, don't stop drinking it. we count on americans to buy our coffee. it's the only way we can survive."

so i made a sort of convenant with this gentleman that i would drink guatemalan coffee whenever i had the chance, and if it wasn't an option i would support the next-closest coffee geographically.

something occurred to me when i took a sip of my bolivian coffee today though - with the economy tanking in the united states, people are cutting back on the ways they're spending money. and almost every "ways to save money during the recession" list i come across suggests removing the $3 cappuccino/latte from your daily spending.

i agree that $3 a day for a year is a large sum of money (over $1000), and saving that sure would be swell for our wallets here in the US, but i have to beg americans to please not remove coffee from your life enirely. instead, please turn to black coffee. it uses the same amount of ground coffee per cup as an expensive latte, but it is half the cost. you'll get your caffeine fix, you'll save some money, and you'll continue to support the lives of coffee farmers and their families everywhere.

even better: buy a bag of regional coffee and brew it yourself. it's even cheaper for you and it's the same number of beans sold. let's do the math over two weeks - cause that's about how long a bag lasts (at least for me):

cappuccino/latte = $3 x 10 working days = $30
black coffee = $1.50 x $10 working days = $15
bag of fairly traded regional coffee = $10

so please. don't eliminate coffee from your daily routine. coffee farmers across the globe need our business. thanks.

-ap.

re: open letter to starbucks.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92151783

merely a coincidence following my post from last night (see below).
very interesting and mildly exciting.

-ap.

open letter to starbucks.

dear starbucks,

why must you appear on every street corner in every major city and commercialize the coffee shop industry? it eliminates the atmosphere that the coffee-drinking culture has tried to hard to establish. coffee shops are arenas of community. they are calm, unique and the perfect environment for relaxation and conversation. they are not what you have created them to be. you have turned them into a fast-paced, impersonal corporation. you are about pleasing those who have to pull their Blackberry away from their ear so they can receive their latte at the snap of a finger. there is no community. instead there is a suit and tie and a wall street journal so everyone can read about how well your stupid stock is doing.

how about you tell everyone why your stock is doing so well? who wouldn't want to buy shares of a company who pulls a 60% profit margin? SIXTY percent! one would think a company like yours could afford to slip a little more dinero to your farmers in central and south america, africa and indonesia. and what's even worse, you try and play it off like you're doing the world a service by selling Fair Trade coffee, but what the world doesn't know is that you're only investing about 4% of your total coffee purchases in Fair Trade.

side note: Fair Trade is rather frustrating for me. there is Fair Trade, and there is "fairly traded" coffee. you already know and understand this, you shades, but let me explain my frustration. let's say there are four major coffee farmers in Brazil: Farmers A, B, C and D. let's say Farmer A grows the best coffee in the region, so he gets paid the most money. Farmers B, C and D cannot compete with Farmer A, so they call up Fair Trade, pool their beans, and have FT pay them more money for an inferior product. That is how Fair Trade works, so even though Farmer A might have a significantly better product, they're not getting a payment to match it. "fairly traded" coffee eliminates middle men without a label and directly pays Farmers A, B, C and D the money they deserve for the product they're farming. it's simple economics.

while we're at it, one might wonder why an establishment with such a mighty profit margin can't afford to make better coffee. selecting between "dark" and "charred" is not something i enjoy doing. the "smoky" finish you boast is not something to be proud of - i highly doubt that it is even intentional. why don't you take that extra money and dabble in the best coffee there is to offer while paying the farmers the price you're forking over to the FT label for that average business. heck, why not even pay more? its better coffee right? why not splurge a little? invest some money that will increase the quality of your product instead of building another location across the street from the one that's already there.

however, i'm not sure it's even about the coffee anymore. i would also like to thank you, starbucks, for turning away from your coffee and toward marketing and merchandise. i'm glad that once a week i can visit your "cafe" and receive a free itunes download with my coffee purchase. it brings me great joy to go to your website and see that your brewing equipment and travel mugs are listed ahead of the sections of your site regarding the coffee you "proudly serve" all over. thick sarcasm here.

lastly, a personal account: i braved one of your many kansas city locations so that i could blog a bit before a meeting. i ordered my iced tea and sat down with my laptop only to find out that wifi is only free to starbucks card members who have used their card in the last 30 days. i just flat out don't appreciate that guys. i was a paying customer, but that wasn't good enough. i have to be a starbucks subscriber of sorts. how can you not afford to provide free wifi? thats a joke. because clearly you can. you just choose to make life that much more difficult for those of us who desire a place to relax and enjoy.

just a few thoughts to consider from yours truly. i realize that these words are falling onto hearts of stone, but perhaps the individuals who actually frequent my blog will start to ask some questions for themselves. maybe instead of walking to the nearest corner to hit up the mcdonalds of the future you'll actually seek out a place that both needs and deserves your money more.

down with starbucks. long live the independent cafe.

-ap.

86 coffee.

i've decided to give up drinking coffee until my birthday.
that's march 14.
that's 33 days*.
probably one of the most difficult things i've ever done.

i'm not doing it for lent. i've never observed lent in my life and i'm not really anxious to do so now. this might be a little bit of a controversial thought process - but i dont really want to be thought of as observing a Catholic tradition. not that i don't respect it and not that i dont believe it has some serious reverence. i simply want to be known as a "little Christ" and not a "Catholic". call me religiously stubborn or closeminded if you like - i'm just not comfortable being associated with Catholicism. this probably goes back to the extremely dense Catholic and/or nominal population in the area of kc i live. a glimpse of what i mean here.

but thats neither here nor there.

i'm doing it because i need some discipline in my life, and i think this is a terrific way to start that (and i think it has actually worked somewhat too - 8 days later i'm sitting in a coffee shop at 7:00 am with my Bible out and i'm throwing down a somewhat spiritual blog for the first time in who knows how long). i'm anxious to see what effect fasting from something so prominent in my life will have on my own spirit.

i wasn't really aware how much i relied on coffee until about day 3 when i randomly fell asleep in the evening for about 2.5 hours. i never do that. i also work in a coffee shop 4 days a week. talk about temptation. just the smell of coffee drives me crazy and this blog is making my mouth water.

i also cannot imagine the joy that will come when the 14th gets here. especially since i'm waking up insanely early that morning to head to GUATEMALA. holler back.

-ap.

* - fav number.

whats so lobby about hobby?

i've decided i need a hobby.

karlie has suggested that we paint/draw together - she paints and then i sketch detail over the top of it. it sounds pretty fun, and maybe we'll try it sometime. who knows, maybe we'll end up with our artwork as the art o' the month at radina's. serious success to be had there. shoot for the moon.

another possibility is piano. i played piano for about 9 years of my life and never learned how to read music - i fooled my teacher into believing i could read, but, in fact, i was just listening closely and playing by ear. however, this has taught me to know all the chords under the sun. and i'm in Introduction to Music and i feel like pursuing an instrument may increase my grade in that class (thats a joke, and the class is too). but i love it and i feel like i could have a lot of fun with it.

spring time is coming - which means disc golf is making a comeback probably. so thats nice. i've gone once in about 6 months.

if you have any other ideas let me know. but i dont expect much of a response. no one reads this mug anyway.

post #159.

its really strange that i've kept up this blogging thing for over a year now.
and it's even stranger that i think i've LOST frequenters since i started. ha.
oh well. it's more for my own personal enjoyment. you guys just get the sloppy seconds.

so i was thinking about my job a little bit today. i make over-priced coffee for manhattan all-stars. we have a rather solid fan base. if zero of the "regulars" came in during a day i think we'd lose about 75% of our total revenue. i guess some people are okay with it. i'm a regular too. however, i'm not a manhattan all-star so i feel justified in dogging a bit.

its kind of fun i guess, the "regs" come in and get their "usual", and i'm familiar with most of them. they all call them different things and if you can remember their flashy name for it then the possibility of getting a phat tip sky rockets. it slowly becomes more and more fun as you become more and more familiar with the patrons of the establishment.

the thing i dont understand (well, one thing) is how people can go to the same coffee shop every morning and get the same exact beverage(s) for years and not get bored with it. i guess its probably kinda fun for a while, but at some point i start to feel sorry for them. they live in manhattan (and they LIKE it*) and they've gotten into a serious rut, but they don't really seem to be aspiring to anything else. and that somewhat worries me. they don't even change their drinks. maybe i'm just ansy to move on in life, but to me - thats weird.

it helps that most of them come across not-so-normal to begin with.
i hope none of them read my blog too. if so, my frequenters will decrease even more.
maybe i should stop doggin on people and start building others up. that would probably solidify more readers. my negative attitude is a likely turn off.

-ap.

* - Sandlot ref.