The Coffeehouse Today
The institution of the coffeehouse and the cultural place of coffee has shifted greatly over the last few decades. Perhaps most apparent is the shift away from the coffeehouse itself. No longer is coffee restricted to public spaces—home brewing is the most common way Americans get their fill.
Coffee: The human fuel
The popular fridge magnet at the right well characterizes one attitude toward coffee today. While coffee has been appreciated for its utility in the past, recent American culture ranks it foremost as a fuel. A community pot brews in nearly every workplace across the country. The Broadway number captures the place of coffee in modern hears and minds. Workers need their fix. It's the drug that keeps them going, and without the black stuff, they are lost and productivity halts.
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The Advent of Franchise
Is Dunkin' Donuts a venue for social and political discourse? Or is it more a gas station for the modern human body? The goal seems to be: to get in, get your cup, and get out. The building is set up around the notion of the car. Mornings are the prime time (numbers). A different place than the coffeehouses of old.
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The Specialty Coffee Counterforce
The shift of coffee has not been in one direction. While home brewing and the likes of Duncan Donuts get you a fix for cheap, the most powerful force in coffee since the 1980s has been the advent of Starbucks. Starbucks has in prompted a mainstream appreciation of high end coffee. It has been the "tide that raises all boats" (Morris, 278).
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What does this say about us?
Even today, there are many coffee houses and cafes where people go to converse, catch up, shoot the breeze, and discuss politics with strangers. Perhaps the institution of official venues for public discourse began to reduce the "need" for coffeehouses as the public sphere. Perhaps very recently, the advent of the internet has shifted the public sphere to the virtual world, with comment sections, forums, and social networks serving as mediums for discourse. The internet has changed the social meaning of the coffeehouse—today, people go there to be together, to be alone. The sitting area is populated by laptops and ipads, taking advantage of the ubiquitous free WiFi.
Coffee has often been a fuel, a social lubricant, a ritual, but without human culture, it is just a substance. Dr. Goodman pointed out to me that the meaning of coffee is that which we give it. What will coffee mean in the future? Who is to say? But at the very least, it seems like it is not going away anytime soon.
Coffee has often been a fuel, a social lubricant, a ritual, but without human culture, it is just a substance. Dr. Goodman pointed out to me that the meaning of coffee is that which we give it. What will coffee mean in the future? Who is to say? But at the very least, it seems like it is not going away anytime soon.