The Coffee Shop

  

The Coffee Shop

 

Seems that the first coffee houses in Sacramento sprung up in Sacramento in the 1970s.  Before that time, I do not remember any coffee houses in Sacramento where people hung out, read, talked, or listened to music.   I had been to Café Trieste in San Francisco a couple times and really liked it but going there was not a regular routine.  I had been to New York a few times and I remember some diners where people hung out, but not coffee houses as we have now.  They probably existed in Manhattan, but I did not seek them out.

My favorite coffee house was Weatherstone on 21st Street in Sacramento.   It was in a very old building in a residential neighborhood on a street that had a grass strip down its middle.   I used to walk there all the time.  At first, it was a very funky coffee house – fitting the 1970s time period.  Over the years, larger coffee houses have operated it and it has become a bit more refined.  Today it is part of Old Soul Coffee.  Old Soul owns four or five hip coffee houses in Sacramento.

I love sitting in a coffee house and smelling the coffee brewing.  I normally order just a regular coffee, it’s the least expensive and you can go back for refills.  I use half-and-half but no sugar.  I love to go to where the coffee house keeps the sweeteners and creamers and pour in the half-and half.   Most of the time the coffee cup is too full, and you have to pour some from the top into the trash to have enough room for the half-and-half.   I really do not like that since COVID, most coffee houses no longer keep that out and they pour the creamer in for you.  I want to be in control of that process myself.   It just isn’t the same. 

My favorite thing to do in a coffee house is read the newspaper.  There’s something special about reading the newspaper in a coffee house.  Normally, I would start with reading the free local newspaper, the Suttertown News.  That paper has been gone since the 1980s.  Later, it was the Sacramento News & Review, which is still published today.  I could normally find a Sacramento Bee, which at the time was a large and successful newspaper but no more.  If I scored, I would find the San Francisco Chronicle in the free paper bin.  Luckier yet was a Sunday Chronicle with its “pink section” with all the movies and shows.  It seems so sophisticated and urban chic.  Once in a great while I would score the New York Times.  That was real reading. 

There were no cell phones in the coffee house.  People would all be looking down, like today, but at printed material and not screens.  Once in a while I would strike up a conversation with someone about some news story or happening in the city.  Often, I would run into friends, and we would sit together talking and reading.   

A close second for hanging out at the time was a place called la boulangerie, today just known as La Bou.  They opened in the early 1980’s.   Besides coffee, they had croissants!  I spent a lot of time hanging out there. They were the first croissant place in Sacramento.   

We live much further from coffee shops today.  I loved Cove Coffee in Point Arena, but it has been closed.   Love Headlands Coffee in Ft Bragg, but it is far away.  But if they had a local coffee shop, especially one I could walk to, I would still be hanging out there today.

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