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Two of my favorite things (Early Intel Mac edition).
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My wife bought me a white coffee mug with a kitten on it (just the kitten's face) for my birthday one year. This was back when we were dating. She did it as a joke, only to discover just how much of a cat person I am (KITTY!!!!!). Now she's like OMG and just rolls her eyes at me about that mug (every time).
Unfortunately, it dropped from my hand getting out of the car at one point. And doubly unfortunately it was one of those cheap mass-produced gift shop mugs by a no-name company that become unique because of obscurity. I've never been able to find a duplicate of that mug on eBay sadly.
I loved that mug 😿
Create a replacement yourself, buy a mug that matches the original's dimensions and have someone print the design onto it for you.
That's a thought…I still have a picture.Create a replacement yourself, buy a mug that matches the original's dimensions and have someone print the design onto it for you.
Lol this reminds me of my sister in law buying me a 4finger XL Janet Jackson coffee mug from her last tour. None of you know me but JJ is about as juxtaposed to my actual musical tastes as one could get. We all got a good laugh and yes, I still have that mug. It unfortunately is made of iron and refuses to crack/break despite multiple drops.
I believe my wife and her sister secretly conspired to infiltrate my coffee mug cabinet with this hideous indestructible idol to bad music.
Anybody want it? lol 😂
Couple of my "special" mugs from my long gone days in Mac-business. I still use the Sony FD Trinitron mug but I am saving the PC-mug for future generations. The stainless steel Sony mug is "cool". Doesn't get hot on the outside and keeps coffee hot in the inside. I guess it has some kind of thermos -tech inside its thick walls and bottom?
![Coffee mugs.jpg]( "Coffee mugs.jpg")
The stainless steel Sony mug is "cool". Doesn't get hot on the outside and keeps coffee hot in the inside. I guess it has some kind of thermos -tech inside its thick walls and bottom?
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Those are both very cool mugs.
I used to do a lot of camping and backpacking in the early to mid 2ks and I loved this mug as well. Another sad day when it cracked a third & final time and was unrepairable but used it daily for probably 5 or 6 years+backpacking and camping. The way it interlocked, there was space for 3 or so single serve instant coffee sleeves inside.
![5292.gif]()
I used to do a lot of camping and backpacking in the early to mid 2ks and I loved this mug as well. Another sad day when it cracked a third & final time and was unrepairable but used it daily for probably 5 or 6 years+backpacking and camping. The way it interlocked, there was space for 3 or so single serve instant coffee sleeves inside.
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I met my wife when I was working at United Parcel Service in my 20s. We both worked at the West Coast Air Hub (Ontario, California) on the 9pm to 1am shift (Intra Sort). We used to go in to work about 30 mins early and 'borrow' some of the drivers lockers for our stuff. Underneath they had a break room that was never crowded at the time we used it.Those are both very cool mugs.
I used to do a lot of camping and backpacking in the early to mid 2ks and I loved this mug as well. Another sad day when it cracked a third & final time and was unrepairable but used it daily for probably 5 or 6 years+backpacking and camping. The way it interlocked, there was space for 3 or so single serve instant coffee sleeves inside.
![5292.gif]()
We brought two thermoses. One was that old green Stanley thermos (I still have it) and an actual short Thermos. The Stanley had hot coffee and the Thermos had half and half. The lid had a compartment in it that we stored sugar cubes in. So, hot coffee with cream and sugar before work. We made just enough coffee and only poured in enough cream so that both thermoses were empty when we were done. The Thermos had a glass liner which is why we used it for cream.
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So apparently, I am an "often straightforward, no-nonsense individual who enjoys minimalism in his life."
Or… a 'psychopath'.
![2024-01-06 09.36.02.jpg]( "2024-01-06 09.36.02.jpg")
www.pennlive.com
Uhhhhhhh…really? I just stopped using sugar and cream because the doctor said I should!
Or… a 'psychopath'.
Straightforward or psycho? What your cup of coffee says about you
Apparently you can tell a lot about a person by how they take their coffee.
Uhhhhhhh…really? I just stopped using sugar and cream because the doctor said I should!
Ok…so now a "comfort seeking, straightforward, no-nonsense individual who enjoys minimalism and values relaxation in his life…psychopath."So apparently, I am an "often straightforward, no-nonsense individual who enjoys minimalism in his life."
Or… a 'psychopath'.
View attachment 2333408
Straightforward or psycho? What your cup of coffee says about you
Apparently you can tell a lot about a person by how they take their coffee.
Uhhhhhhh…really? I just stopped using sugar and cream because the doctor said I should!
What does having a Quad Venti Flat White from Starbucks in a Dunkin' Donuts mug say? Hmmmmmm…
There used to be a coffee shop in Seattle (rip) renown for its location in a disused 1920s car dealership, whose shelves, from seat level to high ceiling, were chock full of books. They slung their own coffee on the espresso machine, but the real beauty, the real magic is you could order a Hostess Ding-Dong, still in foil wrapper, with your macchiato or cappuccino. One could, alternately, order Twinkies and other Hostess snack cakes. And if my memory serves correctly, one could even, up until about 2004, order one of those mini-boxes of Kellogg’s cereals and a bowl of cold milk (or soy milk) to eat some cereal at your table.
I feel like a kind of magic was lost when that place didn’t survive being relocated temporarily elsewhere, as the original building was earthquake-retrofitted for a condo tower being put in. Yes, we might like fresh coffee, but there are times we might not be in the mood for a blackcurrant scone or gourmet hemp flour chocolate cookie from the organic bakery across town.
Locally, where I live, no café has, to my knowledge, ever tried offering childhood-fave, mass-produced confections. It sounds ridiculous, but sometimes you just want something really basic and comforting with your java.
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I am waiting for the day that Scooter's Coffee opens it's location near my house (like walking distance!). Once they do I can finally ditch Starbucks. I emailed them and they say the shop opens in March 2024, so almost time!
In the meantime, I have taken to going down the street to the Starbucks inside the Basha's (grocery store). It's never crowded - unlike the location at 99th Ave and Camelback that is and doesn't give a **** about you.
I almost long for the day when the Starbucks baristas were snooty and holier-than-thou when serving you. At least it was still 'special' then.
Being I’m in Canada, I’ve never heard of them until now. My cow eyes misread it initially as “Senator’s Coffee”, which made me think I’d be endlessly amused at the existence of a Senator Scooter.
I looked up their franchise page and noted they seem to have a peculiar aversion to California:
All that highly local location info is going right over my head, you know.
I can’t say when I might happen to be in Arizona. I can say, after five decades, it’s the only of the Four Corners states inside which I’ve never set foot.
🧐 There was a time? Wild.
Heck, I’m so old (though almost the same age as you!) that I remember a Houston Post cover story on their Sunday edition about the independent coffee shops of Houston holding their own as the Starbucks invasion (expansion) was just really picking up steam (pun not intended).
What I remember is the colour, page one photo, big enough to be above and below the fold, of a wild-eyed, caffeinated barista, an early twenty-something guy in a tie-dye t-shirt and black beret, staring at the camera whilst, simultaneously, pouring steamed milk into a cappuccino mug already filled with an espresso shot, and something about how, in a snooty way, whenever a customer would come in and order “a coffee”, followed by him asking, “What kind would you like?” the customer would reply, “A regular.” The barista would ding back the customer, replying: “There’s no country called ‘Regular’.”
That was also back during a time when independent coffee shops still permitted smoking inside a portion of the place, so long as there was a glass door separating the two sections.
I admit, I miss that sass, but what I miss more is the complete abundance of places slinging coffee which aren’t franchises or chains (as those, at least those with Italian espresso machines, didn’t really have a strong presence) — where it was vital to get to know what was around locally; to try them all out; to figure out which place(s) had the roasts and the barista coffee-making style you liked most; and to rest assure in the knowledge you could come in, morning, afternoon, or evening, and you’d have a consistently good coffee and a really enjoyable, unique place to spend a little time to yourself (or maybe to chew the fat with the barista who knew exactly what you liked). (This was also a time when I remember coffee shops having stool seating at the long counter where the barista(s) worked — sort of like a bar with a bartender.
(edit: I had to re-work that first sentence in the previous graf, as I wasn’t conveying precisely what I wanted until this fourth revise.)
Somewhere along the way, the Starbucks phenom dissolved that personality as local/regional competitors echoed how the new juggernaut did business. Hot take: we lost something with that.
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I'd never heard of them either until I passed by their location and noticed their sign. Apparently they have been in Sun City for quite some time. But I am rarely up that way and never near that location so I wouldn't have known.
They are reportedly very good. No idea why they'd be adverse to Cali.
Oh yes, I figured. It's near my house, but you'd have a wide area to look at to find me.All that highly local location info is going right over my head, you know.
I can’t say when I might happen to be in Arizona. I can say, after five decades, it’s the only of the Four Corners states inside which I’ve never set foot.
2009-2010…when we were actually going there on a weekendly basis.
Either in 1997 or 1998 my parents, my wife and I all went and saw Riverdance in Palm Springs. Afterwards we ran through Starbucks and when I went to get the drinks, my wife's drink had some sort of problem that I do not recall. I asked it to be remade and the barista complied. When she was finished she angrily shoved the cup at me. I suppose it might have been that we'd asked for our drinks in 'for here' mugs.
But in general, at that time, the baristas were pretty arrogant - like they were doing you a favor. We still had to travel to get our coffee and it was good, and the atmosphere was great so we ignored it. But at some point my wife assigned the ordering task to me. Because I was more patient with arrogant baristas that she would much rather rip heads off and stomp on.
Anyway, as an aside, there was also a Seattle's Best at one point. It was only a little farther and we only visited once but it was good. One of the reasons I was so happy to see a SeaBest in Phoenix around 2002-2003. Long gone now of course.
Once Starbucks changed its rewards program though I bailed and we found a local shop Colado's which has excellent coffee and treats customers right. Unfortunately, they only had one location at the time and with three people, two laptops and an iPad in standing room only we stopped going. Then COVID hit. The location near us in also near a grocery store we regularly shop at so I check how busy it is from time to time. I'd like to return, but I don't want to have to be hunting for a table again.
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LOL, that was 2.5 years ago. Long consumed by now. And it would have been poured into a glass that had ice in it.
I suss a chunk of that generation of Starbucks baristas were probably labour refugees of the independent coffee shops which Starbucks had put out of business locally. There was always a slight bit of surliness from early ’90s baristas which, lacking a common pop culture metaphor around coffee, I turn instead to surliness expressed by the independent music shop’s characters in the ’90s version of High Fidelity (think especially the Tim Robbins scene). That shift from independent to corporate probably didn’t endear those displaced baristas to the new order of slinging java according to corporate formula, etc.
I can only guess here since, well, I worked in independent music and book stores back then.
That’s sort of what happened once Starbucks bought out Seattle’s Best.
In that 2002–04 window, there was this one Seattle’s Best, with branded seating area, carved within a QFC supermarket, which was open 24/7. My then-bff and I would go there at 2a to work on stuff, and it was during a period when I would drink a lot of steamed milk with shots of hazelnut syrup. That was just after the takeover, but the standalone locations, before being relegated to a brand of pre-packaged coffee, remained a nice go-to when little else was open or nearby.
I want to say the very last time I ordered a coffee from a coffee shop, chain or independent, was just weeks before pandemic lockdown began. Ever since, I’ve made coffee at home (French press).
Since pandemic waned, I’ve felt nearly zero desire to go to a Starbucks, Second Cup, or the like ever since. The offerings locally of independent coffee shops (which haven’t adopted a tediously predictable pattern of gentrified/cleansed, mostly empty spaces designed for the customer to not want to stay for a bit) is really at a nadir.
I find I’m disinterested to spend up to six dollars for an average coffee (without a baked item), inside a place which looks like a staged home on a real estate listing; whose seating is really uncomfortable (ostensibly, to thwart itinerant customers and/or “campers” with their laptops as they “work from home-away-from-home”; and whose operating hours never extend into the evening, much less into late-night.
On that very last bit, as an urbanist, I know why that’s the general pattern, but that’s a thesis I don’t wanna get into (especially after all the other wall-o’-texting I’ve committed on that other EIM thread).
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One of the reasons I'm hopeful for Scooters. At the very least it's a coffee shop that is within a 5-10 minute walk for me. Being able to simply walk to a coffee shop is one of the primary reasons for our move from bumf*** nowhere to a city 24 years ago.I want to say the very last time I ordered a coffee from a coffee shop, chain or independent, was just weeks before pandemic lockdown began. Ever since, I’ve made coffee at home (French press).
Since pandemic waned, I’ve felt nearly zero desire to go to a Starbucks, Second Cup, or the like ever since. The offerings locally of independent coffee shops (which haven’t adopted a tediously predictable pattern of gentrified/cleansed, mostly empty spaces designed for the customer to not want to stay for a bit) is really at a nadir.
I find I’m disinterested to spend up to six dollars for an average coffee (without a baked item), inside a place which looks like a staged home on a real estate listing; whose seating is really uncomfortable (ostensibly, to thwart itinerant customers and/or “campers” with their laptops as they “work from home-away-from-home”; and whose operating hours never extend into the evening, much less into late-night.
On that very last bit, as an urbanist, I know why that’s the general pattern, but that’s a thesis I don’t wanna get into (especially after all the other wall-o’-texting I’ve committed on that other EIM thread).
If it's simply a drive through, well I can at least walk up, order and walk back. I at least get some exercise from it. If it turns out I can hang there, then I'm very close to home. We will see.
There's another coffee chain making inroads in Phoenix called Blackrock Coffee that are mostly driveup/walkups so my hope is Scooter's is at least like that. My wife loves the Mexican Mocha BR serves, which is appropriate since she's Mexican-American.
PS. We avoid Dutch Brothers, which is pretty popular. They have good coffee there, but they want to do stuff for you and not allow you to do it for yourself. Something my wife and I both find irritating.
If you're still in Seattle I used to live about a block away from this AWESOME coffee place in West Seattle...![Screen Shot 2024-01-06 at 6.23.08 PM.png]( "Screen Shot 2024-01-06 at 6.23.08 PM.png")
There used to be a coffee shop in Seattle (rip) renown for its location in a disused 1920s car dealership, whose shelves, from seat level to high ceiling, were chock full of books. They slung their own coffee on the espresso machine, but the real beauty, the real magic is you could order a Hostess Ding-Dong, still in foil wrapper, with your macchiato or cappuccino. One could, alternately, order Twinkies and other Hostess snack cakes. And if my memory serves correctly, one could even, up until about 2004, order one of those mini-boxes of Kellogg’s cereals and a bowl of cold milk (or soy milk) to eat some cereal at your table.
I feel like a kind of magic was lost when that place didn’t survive being relocated temporarily elsewhere, as the original building was earthquake-retrofitted for a condo tower being put in. Yes, we might like fresh coffee, but there are times we might not be in the mood for a blackcurrant scone or gourmet hemp flour chocolate cookie from the organic bakery across town.
Locally, where I live, no café has, to my knowledge, ever tried offering childhood-fave, mass-produced confections. It sounds ridiculous, but sometimes you just want something really basic and comforting with your java.
It is EXACTLY the coffee place that everyone here is wishing was a short walk from their front door. Even has a Macintosh laptop in one of the photos on their webpage!
Attachments
Yes, I’ve also lived in BFE a couple of times. It’s especially unpleasant when you don’t own a car any longer and you discover just how subpar local public transit service actually is.
That an objective of the five-minute, ten-minute, and fifteen-minute city (the latter being fodder of conspiracy by, well, those who wouldn’t know the difference between a minor zoning variance and a CBD). To be near enough to things you do, things you want, and things you need, being within walking, bicycling, and/or public transit, and to be back home within a half-hour — without needing to get into a car — is not only an urban planning focus, but also a public health one.
I tend to discuss a “flex-minute” model when discussing the five/ten/fifteen-minute city model for cities which experience extreme weather for a season of the year. Around here, that would mean encouraging what might mean the fifteen-minute walk to a favourite shop or café might, in the cold weeks of January (well, most Januaries), would flex back to a five-minute-each-way scope. This is for practical reasons as well as for proximal health reasons. To use your locale as an example: to have a month above, say, 43C/110F, as with last July, might make fifteen or even ten minutes an immediate, present hazard for most people, limiting that safer scope to five minutes. It’s just as when it gets no warmer here than, say, above -18C/0F, or when we’re under hazardous air quality conditions on an especially hot, humid day in August.
That said, getting outside on foot or two pedals, and getting some exercise to grab a coffee, even if just for a short bit, goes a very long way to improve one’s own mental health, if nothing else and also cuts down on the frequency, at mass scale, of micro car trips which contribute negatively to air quality and carbon dioxide output (as ICE vehicles tend to be at their least efficient and most-polluting in the several minutes after being started up).
There's another coffee chain making inroads in Phoenix called Blackrock Coffee that are mostly driveup/walkups so my hope is Scooter's is at least like that. My wife loves the Mexican Mocha BR serves, which is appropriate since she's Mexican-American.
I briefly misread that as Black Rifle Coffee, whose notoriety from south of 49 has made news here in Canada, even as they no longer have a café presence.
As in, they insist on pouring the sugar and milk/cream? Nah. No thanks.
Nah, I haven’t lived in Seattle since the aughts, even though I spent a few months there in 2010 and 2012.
I was referring to the long-gone Bauhaus Coffee in Cap Hill, which used to be at the SE corner of Bellevue and Pine.
It is EXACTLY the coffee place that everyone here is wishing was a short walk from their front door. Even has a Macintosh laptop in one of the photos on their webpage!
We should want everything, especially what urbanists classify as “low-order goods and services” (a long list of stuff like coffee shops to greengrocers to dry cleaners to bakeries to pharmacies to diners (remember those?), typically owned and operated by families and partnerships, rather than franchisees), within walking, bicycling, and/or easy transit hop distance of where we live and work.
Yeah, I looked Black Rifle up when they started appearing on the shelves at our local Walmart. Not interested.
Yes, but more like "How many sugars do you want?" And then being confused as to why I wanted any sugar at all in my cappuccino. I will decide that, thank you!As in, they insist on pouring the sugar and milk/cream? Nah. No thanks.
Also, what constitutes a standard measure of sugar? A teaspoon? A lump/cube? A mechanized pump? (I’m looking at you, TIm Hortons!)
Wow, annoying (and, as you note, presumptuous!)
We should want everything, especially what urbanists classify as “low-order goods and services” (a long list of stuff like coffee shops to greengrocers to dry cleaners to bakeries to pharmacies to diners (remember those?), typically owned and operated by families and partnerships, rather than franchisees), within walking, bicycling, and/or easy transit hop distance of where we live and work.
This exact model actually exists...it's called "Japan". I travel there multiple times a year with my wife who's Japanese and everything that you just described is exactly that country. In fact the entire country is essentially "the romanticized ideal of the 1950's with the majority of the establishments being small businesses and entrepreneurs and artisans"...all withing walking distance of awesome clean/safe/efficient/affordable public transportation.
Every time I go there, I HATE coming back to the States afterwards.
Oh well, that's what retirement planning is for!