Coffee time

When I first got to the West Coast, I took a somewhat demeaning temp job running errands for a very wealthy family. (I won't say who, except that some of you are familiar with his bluegrass-festival-sponsoring former business partner, who is widely regarded as one of the nicest men in the hardcore finance industry. The guy I worked for, however, was a major-league prick to me on the one occasion when I met him.) The family had several full-time staff working at his house during the summer, even though no one was actually living there during those months.

The enduring memories of those strange few weeks:
∙Buying diapers and cat food, multiple times.
∙Experiencing a 5.0-magnitude earthquake on the first floor of their house. It was my official welcome, just three weeks after I arrived in SF. (Since then, I've felt one other substantial shock, missed another while rocking out, and noted a couple of very minor tremors while sitting or lying very still.)
∙Taking the Mercedes 500SL convertible in for service. This occurred in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, during the height of the dot-com boom. It seemed like a lot of people were staring at this 26-year-old kid in a flannel shirt driving that car, thinking, "He's one of those people."
∙The attitudes of the house's manager, who got very pissy when the weather turned foggy but still chose to live in San Francisco. Odd bird.
∙The sad wastefulness of the extremely wealthy.
∙The family's insistence on Graffeo coffee.

Yesterday I went walking in North Beach, and wandered by the Graffeo coffee roastery. On an impulse, I walked in and asked the guy for a pound of dark roast. He reached in with a big scoop, dumped it on a scale, ground it with my French press in mind, and sent me on my way with a bag of still-warm grounds that substantially exceeded one pound net weight. Nice.

The verdict? Worth $13.75 a pound. Oh yes. I can see why they sent me out of my way for it. Trader Joe's Bay Blend will never seem adequate again.

Is it possible that finer coffee beans result in a "smoother" experience of the caffeine rush? If better alcohol results in milder hangovers, why wouldn't it stand to reason that better coffee would result in a mellower feel? Something's just different about this stuff.


FMFM: The Birth of a Band and The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones, found as a nice twofer LP. These are extremely exciting sessions from 1959, with highlights from Lee Morgan, Phil Woods and more. Great charts (not all from Jones), and flawless execution.