The Café Way

Dear, Bashful.

Thanks for the question. Drinking coffee in a café is easy. Fitting in at a café can be a daunting experience. It’s hard to know how to fit in sometimes, but thankfully you can take some direction from the environment itself.

1. Have a beard.
   • It can be a neatly trimmed history professor beard or a gloriously braided viking beard… it does not matter.
   • It is imperative that your beard be clean. Swinging your wizard beard around with a half-eaten bologna sandwich in it is not considered polite or sophisticated.
   • If you cannot have a beard, thoughtfully stroking your face where a beard may have been otherwise is an acceptable substitute.
2. Wear an appropriately interesting hat.
   • This will help to advertise how committed you are to the work – whatever that happens to be.
   • Don’t wear a fedora. The internet will tell you why.
3. Bring a laptop to type on.
   • This is the work that you’re committed to in-between sips of coffee.
   • A tattered notebook is also acceptable if you don’t have a laptop.
   • Laptop / notebook stickers are required. These give other patrons subtle clues about the depths of your sophistication. Choose wisely.
4. Refine you coffee drinking technique.
   • Whether subtle or grandiose, your coffee drinking technique has the potential to heighten your café experience and amaze those around you. Here are a few techniques to try:
     • The Slurp: sucking in air while sipping your coffee. Simultaneously breathing in through your nose while you slurp will bring fullness and richness to the coffee flavors. Coffee roasters do this during the cupping process to help judge the quality of the roasted coffee beans. Adjust the volume of your slurping to suit your environment – loud slurping might get you shot in some cafés.
     • The Loon: mystically emoting over an overly full cup of coffee. I learned this technique from a shaman in Missoula years ago. Fill a wide mouth coffee mug to the brim (bonus points for surface tension), raise it to your mouth as if you are going to take a delicate sip… and then hoot like a lonely loon calling its mate from across a still mountain lake. Repeat the hooting 3-4 more times with decreasing volume each time. When the hoot becomes a whisper, indulge in a few dainty sips of coffee. The reverb off the coffee surface is amazing and you feel quite mystical afterwards.
     • The Toddler: enhancing your coffee via aeration. Connoisseurs understand that many beverages benefit from the introduction of additional oxygen before drinking, e.g., swirling wine in a cup, shaking cocktails in a shaker, etc. To properly execute this technique, one must place a hard plastic/metal straw into the hot coffee and blow. Avoid the use of paper/eco straws as they tend to go limp and disintegrate if you look at them wrong. Vary the air pressure to accommodate the amount of coffee in the cup. You want it to be pleasantly burbly experience, not a battle with an exploding garbage disposal. Extra sophistication credit for ironically humming The Itsy Bitsy Spider while aerating your coffee.
     • The Barbarian: similar in purpose to The Toddler, but projects power in addition to sophistication. With this technique, posture and steadiness are important. Firmly plant your feet on the floor, square your shoulders, and then take a large drink of coffee. Carefully hold the coffee in your mouth, throw your head back, and vigorously gargle. Once you are sure that you have secured everyone’s attention, loudly swallow, and then powerfully exclaim: “AAAAHHHHHH!”. Coordination of these powerful exclamations of satisfaction and slamming one’s mug on the table might take some time to learn, but once you get the timing figured out, it’s quite worth it.

Like any worthy goal, it’s going to take some hard work. Keep practicing. One day, you will finally find yourself at ease in the presence of fellow coffee sophisticates.