 |  |  |
|
EVERY REVOLUTION needs a coffee shop. Thus, by some twisted turn of logic, every coffee shop needs a revolution. The communal appeal of the contemporary coffee shop can be traced to any number of sources: British pubs, Algerian tea houses, Italian wine bars, German beer gardens, and perhaps even Chinese opium dens. The Parisian ideal — coffee and conversation by day, proclamations and marches to the barricades by night — may well be a phenomenon of the last century. Still, since Sartre abandoned Les Deux Magots for the greener pastures of Montparnasse Cemetery, and the Dadaists of Cabaret Voltaire became psychologists and surrealists, cafe culture has permeated our own shores. From New York, the aroma of freshly ground espresso beans and fermenting revolution crept north, to the Puritan strongholds of New England. Despite the romantic associations, coffee shops in Providence are mostly casual meeting places, refuges from ungodly weather, and de facto sites for awkward first dates. While some ambitiously sip mocha lattes with soy milk while reading Hemingway and Camus, or studying Havel, Che, and Marx, many more watch the people pass and absently flip through that morning’s Providence Journal — not exactly revolutionary behavior. All is not lost, however. This informal guide is meant to motivate and direct the reader to the most fitting combination of coffee and political ideals, because nobody, after all, goes to a coffee shop just for coffee. Discussions will take root, and communities will flourish. Then, when the time is right, some catastrophic political event will momentarily unite the various factions of Providence’s café culture, and we will speak with one voice. Or more likely, denizens of various cafés will continue to brood over black cups of coffee and consider making that transition to vanilla soy lattes. (Although a number of fine cafés can be found outside the capital city, we confined this survey to the city with our state’s richest concentration of coffee resources.) STUDENT REVOLT, PARIS, MAY 1968 Ocean Coffee Roasters 110 Waterman St., (401) 331-5282, www.oceancoffee.com What started as a student protest against the conservative university system quickly grew into a full-fledged revolution. Protesters erected barriers in the Latin Quarter of Paris, occupied the Sorbonne, and 10 million striking workers soon joined them. Similarly, Ocean Coffee is a place where students come when they don’t want to go to class. While idealistic sloganeering and concocting Molotov cocktails has perhaps given way to complaining about class work, Ocean is still a good place to malign the university system, buy dated baked goods and thin coffee, and revel in inattentive service. Like May 1968, the premise of Ocean is good — the café has a wide variety of organic Fair Trade whole bean coffees for sale. But something went amiss. In the last two years, most of Ocean’s patently hip employees have vanished, replaced with a formalist regime. Still, it’s nice to sit outside on a warm summer day (by June, Sartre and the students had been forced out by De Gaulle’s tanks), and enjoy an iced coffee along with the spectacle of pretty people strolling by. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Coffee Exchange 207 Wickenden St., (401) 273-1198, www.coffeexchange.com The Coffee Exchange shares the lively ambiance and familiar décor that make the American Revolution so universally popular. The coffee is as pure as Washington’s ideals, the hearth is warm, and the recipes for the baked goods have probably been in the family since it crossed the Atlantic. The ethics are also impeccable: Coffee Exchange serves only certified organic, Fair Trade Arabica coffee. It offers five roasts, 13 original blends, and opposes the clear-cutting of rain forests by buying shade-grown coffee. Beyond a sterling social commitment, Coffee Exchange has few frills, making it emblematic of the honest integrity associated with America’s fight for independence from Britain. Unlike Britain, Coffee Exchange also has excellent banana bread. Due to the shop’s location (separated by a body of water from the mother country), a variety of students and East Side residents usually populate it, but the prime Wickenden Street site and spacious patio draws crowds from all over town during the summer. THE ENLIGHTENMENT Brooklyn Coffee & Teahouse 209 Douglas Ave., (401) 575-2284, www.brooklyncoffeeteahouse.com Walking into Brooklyn Coffee & Teahouse, located in a beautifully restored 19th-century brick house on Smith Hill, feels like entering the owner’s private salon. Indeed, Brooklyn is inextricably linked with its proprietor, Anthony Demings, an artist who overhauled the building and displays his own art inside. The café’s name comes from a part of his oeuvre inspired by one tower of the Brooklyn Bridge; Demings draws only "things that have an aura," and the art is appropriately whimsical. Though the cult of personality is not all-encompassing — you won’t find portraits of the host glaring from every wall — the atmosphere, like that of any Enlightenment salon, inevitably draws from the presiding spirit’s own sensibilities. Smith Hill residents, along with Demings’s target audience of "art and coffee lovers, and international people," come for the light, spacious interior, fresh croissants, and the dependable coffee of the day. ATATURK AND THE TURKISH REPUBLIC tazza caffe and lounge 250 Westminster St., (401) 421-3300, www.tazzacaffe.com Tazza, which opened this past New Year’s Eve, combines the charisma and the democratic politics of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. The tastefully decorated space in the Alice Building on Westminster Street serves as a café, bar, gallery, music-film venue, restaurant, and marks another step toward a more vibrant downtown arts scene. Red and orange lamps hang from the high ceilings, and a RISD student made the tables. Tazza caters to the morning crowd with delicious espresso and baked goods, the lunch hour with sandwiches and plush black couches, the after-work scene with a bevy of martinis and other drinks, and everyone else with music, Twin Peaks screenings, digital media performances and installations, a Scrabble night, and belly dancers. The fare includes light salads, sandwiches, and other hors d’oeuvres, and the coffee — even the excellent coffee martini — is Fair Trade. If Ataturk had opened a café in Providence, it might look like tazza. The well-dressed leader, who still enjoys a cultish following, proclaimed the Republic of Turkey in 1923, and continued to modernize the country until his death in 1938, dismantling the remnants of the Ottoman Empire by abolishing the caliphate and religious courts, adopting a new civil code of law, introducing Latin script, and secularizing education. The décor at tazza is rather swank, and though the prices are higher than some area coffee shops, its something-for-everyone approach to improving downtown Providence contrasts nicely with the odd assortment of venues that aim to attract a specific clientele. page 1 page 2 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Issue Date: April 2 - 8, 2004 Back to the Features table of contents |
| Sponsor Links | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| © 2000 - 2009 Phoenix Media Communications Group |