“Coffee shops” weren’t even really a thing until a few decades ago! It was like this Seattle oddity that went national to great fanfare. Starbucks was high-brow, not low-brow
Reposted from
Erich DeLang
As teens the thing to do was to hang out and drink coffee and smoke, and the cool kids did that at Perkins and us dorks were at Grandma’s Restaurant because there wasn’t even Starbucks. First time I saw a real coffeeshop was Rochambo on Brady Street in Milwaukee in like 1999.
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Cafes and teahouses have existed all over the world for hundreds of years.
https://www.londonstockexchange.com/discover/lseg/our-history
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/04/coffeehouses-folk-music-culture-and-counterculture/
So your “point” is wrong, as is @whstancil.bsky.social in this case.
Starbucks just made the coffee shop easier to point at because it was massive and generic.
Other than them, if you wanted a cup to go, you went to Dunkin or a pushcart vendor.
And you're right: coffee shops are ancient.
https://bsky.app/profile/ebharrington.bsky.social/post/3lf47bv7cbc2u
From https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/04/coffeehouses-folk-music-culture-and-counterculture/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/beatniks-new-york
I grew up in NY. The only place to get espresso drinks then was in the Village and Little Italy.
That is false
https://moulinblanccafe.com/the-evolution-of-coffee-shops-in-the-united-states/
And for that matter the first coffee house in London opened in 1652. I think students hung out there even.
Berkeley would bring everyone coffee when she came to visit in the early 90s
No idea when that change was made from the A&P of my childhood thru teen years.
Now commonly seen all over, no. But they're a very old thing.
The French Revolution happened first and foremost in coffee houses.
https://bsky.app/profile/ebharrington.bsky.social/post/3lf47bv7cbc2u
The rise of Starbucks tracks the rise in Americans attending college almost perfectly. A little bit of college life away from campus.
A good chunk of the (real) explosion in food options was convincing white working class midwesterners to try kebabs from that greek diner that had been there since the late ‘70s
It’s just that the 90s were where eating at the long existing Chinese place became a thing that white steelworkers did, so a lot more of those places popped up.
People are getting mad at you because there were Greek diners well outside coastal cities cores well before then. People at at them. It was just (barely) outside the norm of white working class culture
When what was really happening in the late 80s and early 90s is that WWC culturally didn’t partake in the (fewer) available options.
Friends doesn’t happen until after there’s a coffee shop in Indianapolis
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/04/coffeehouses-folk-music-culture-and-counterculture/#:~:text=Coffeehouses%20appeared%20in%20England%20in,established%20in%201676%2C%20in%20Boston.
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/04/coffeehouses-folk-music-culture-and-counterculture/
Are you doubting this was a thing? Bc it most certainly was
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viennese_coffee_house_culture
Very frustrating. Coffee Connection was much better than Starbucks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4-vEwD_7Hk&ab_channel=ClubforGrowth
https://doug.fandom.com/wiki/Doug_on_the_Wild_Side
corporate/franchise coffee shops are post-modern inventions, but coffeeshops have been around since forever.
They were extremely popular (and socially relevant) in the 1950s and early 60s, but remained a fixture in american culture, especially near/on college campuses.
(I lived next door
And it is totally fair to point out that Starbucks' anti-union, corporate approach is antithetical to the pre-existing folk-Leftist coffee house vibe.
And there existed a coffee shop in my tiny isolated town. They didn't do take-out but they were a gathering place.
Coffee shops have been popular social places for intellectuals/journalists since the 1600s or before.
Starbucks just yuppified them: franchising, charging more, having "new" furniture instead of salvaged couches, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeehouse
There just were. I'm too old for this to not sound really stupid to me, sorry, he's just wrong about this one, its ok to be wrong. IF you have the stones to admit it. He doesn't, apparently.
Maybe middle america didn't do cafes, Idk.
Countless hours with friends.
How prior to Starbucks a coffee shop was just a diner or deli and they all aimed to compete on cheaper coffee.
Young people don't realize just how much has changed in the world in just 20 years.
In NYC, they had those shitty coffee trucks, but nothing like Starbucks.
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/04/coffeehouses-folk-music-culture-and-counterculture/
Coffee shops and coffee culture have been around for centuries.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/08/author-michael-pollan-discusses-how-caffeine-changed-the-world/
Now I’m curious what they shopped if not coffee.
https://www.wien.gv.at/english/culture-history/viennese-coffee-culture.html
Coffee at the coffee shop…”
-Frank Sinatra, “Same Old Saturday Night,” 1955
He is arguing that Starbucks started coffee shops outta Seattle.
Obvs they did start coffee shops outta Seattle
We are speaking of history and how things become "a thing." Which means... history is what we are talking about.
there was a similar feeling those of us who started with netflix mail-order when they went streaming
I don't know how many Starbucks there were in 1994, but in 1992 there were only 140.
And oh yeah, Starbucks itself started out as a local coffee shop back in 1971.
Coffee shops were a big thing in the 1950s and early 60s. Its where the beat generation gathered to listen to poetry. And that tradition continued throughout the 60s and early 70s, especially when it came to 'youth oriented" religious organizations who organized non-sectarian
What was "new" about Starbucks was its corporate/franchise structure, nationalizing the renewed intrest in coffee by yuppie afficionados in the 1980s (owning a French press, and grinding your own beans, practically defined yuppiedom)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd%27s_Coffee_House
There's a coffee shop in Oxford that claims it's been there since the 17th century.
Are you talking about a particular type of coffee shop by any chance?
It is known.
Now, off you're high-horse and sing the Very Sorry Song.
cos that's not true either
plan b, Pandora's cup, uncommon grounds, Acadia, muddy Waters. All of these existed before you were born. you tiny child
Eg:
Referring to Starbucks and similar places as coffee shops has come about (at least here in Seattle) in the last couple decades.
Yeah, they were much more interesting than today's coffee shops
Definitely better coffee than SB in the little seaside town I grew up in. And I'm talking UK where coffee at home is trash.🙂
That's one reason coffee places proliferated.
Plain language.
Because all the other places were where people gathered to shoot the shit and drink black coffee 24hrs a day.
This is not in fact implying no one drank coffee. Please read better.
Thanks for that at least.
They were all over the place, they were just mom & pop stores and not a nationwide chain.
Hey, where did the beat poets do that snapping and bongo drum playing?
Coffee houses were a thing for decades in major cities. So we’re Internet cafes
Their strategy: to destroy local coffee houses w help of local govs with promises of economic growth
https://sagebrushcoffee.com/blogs/education/the-ancient-beginnings-of-the-coffeehouse
https://bsky.app/profile/obsoletevernacular.bsky.social/post/3lf37fw5frs2e
You could not live in a tinier more uncool and desolate place than I grew up. And yet we had a coffee shop that served lattes, espresso and regular. This was not unusual in the seventies I grew up in.
Especially ironic since I consider their standard coffee to be bitter and nasty.😏
The Starbucks reference should be a tell, but it’s clearly going over folks’ heads.
Rockford used to have Charlotte’s Web, which was a coffeehouse with live music, but shuttered in the 80s and nothing like it reemerged until the Octane Internet Cafe opened in maybe 1997.
Can’t tell you about everywhere, but that’s how it was here.
I’m saying Rockford (145,000) didn’t have coffeehouses like this, but Milwaukee (600,000) did.
(also I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Cafe du Monde but calling that assembly line tourist trap a “coffeehouse” is 🤔)
But I bet Schaumburg had Thai, but for Somalian, you’d have to go to Chicago.
Cooking in bulk at home and eating leftovers definitely existed but has temporarily fallen out of favor.
Is asking people who are complaining about the cost of private burrito taxis to do that unreasonable?
Beatniks will kick your ass.
What you are thinking of, I think, is franchise coffee shops. Those start out in the late 60s, first with Peet's Coffee and then Starbucks. That is 50 years ago now, which I guess counts as the last few decades. 4/4
https://restaurant-ingthroughhistory.com/2009/09/28/way-out-coffeehouses/
Shrek 2 (2003ish?) has a shot where they make fun of Starbucks by having a crowd run from one getting knocked down (by the giant gingerbread man I think) to another one across the street.
There weren't good places to get coffee to anywhere near the same degree as today, most notably outside of cities and college towns in suburbs and rural towns.
How nice.
https://bsky.app/profile/ebharrington.bsky.social/post/3lf47bv7cbc2u
"In 17th- and 18th-century England, coffeehouses served as public social places where men would meet for conversation and commerce. For the price of a penny, customers purchased a cup of coffee and admission."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_17th_and_18th_centuries
The independent coffee shop had seating and college kids philosophizing at 2am.
The word Cafe is derived from coffee. The Coffeehouse predates the United States by 200 years.