new coke

An article from Wired UK titled "Meet Bruce Mau. He wants to redesign the world." has been making the rounds on the innertubes lately. I like & admire Bruce Mau. He has insightful opinions about brands & branding, & I'm impressed Coca Cola looked to him for his point of view. But a couple sentences early in the article made me stop reading, suddenly & utterly bored.

"Mau observed later that [a commenter at a business conference] was ... representative of what Coke and every other company is up against these days: a public that is more aware of, and concerned about, what firms are doing - and one that also has more ability to question and challenge business than ever before. Companies such as Coke are realising that they must adapt and adjust their behaviour to survive this new level of scrutiny."

Gross!

I often think of brands as people. Are they doing something interesting? Something new? Are they standing tall for what they believe in, sticking to their guns, fighting the good fight? Or any fight. And are they ... you know. Nice? Would I want to talk to this person at a party?

Coca Cola makes sugar water. (Delicious, delicious sugar water, mmmm.) Not new, not that interesting. Okay, so maybe their tastes & values are different than mine. But Mau is suggesting they seek out what people want from them, then change the whole timbre of the brand. He's advising a huge multinational corporation to become boring, sycophantic, & kind of ... sad. I don't want to talk to that person at a party.

It's not that I don't think Coca Cola should be held accountable — I do. And it's good that people are looking closer at the companies to whom they give their money — I'm a fan of voting with money. It's the "adapting & adjusting their behavio(u)r to this new level of scrutiny." No. Be awesome, for its own sake. Or don't be awesome. But always be something. Even you, Coca Cola.

— · — · — · — · — · — · —

Okay, okay, I finished the article. Okay. Curiosity got the better of me, & I was willing to be outraged. (Outrage can be good!) And I re-discovered that Bruce Mau is fucking rad. But I also have very little faith that all the ways in which Coca Cola is attempting to re-organize the company — to "make more sustainable, make more of what we love, using less of what we need" — has anything to do with Coca Cola suddenly becoming awesome thought-leaders & everything to do with Coca Cola wanting everyone to love them, just please won't we only love them, & doing whatever it takes to that end whether they believe in what they're doing or not. And, like I said, that's sad. And the mark of insecurity & fear. And disappointing.

bikes in cities

I first started biking when I moved to Portland, OR, where I was a student looking to save some dimes. I wanted to pay for transportation exactly once. No fares, no gas, no insurance, no licensing. I bought a bike, & I rode it every day, & I took it in for repairs two times. Once, I broke a spoke. And once, I got a flat.

I didn't know how to repair a flat.

Then, I moved to Los Angeles, & I didn't ride for about six months. But I missed it. If I worked on the weekends, I rode in, to "treat" myself. Then, I started to "treat" myself every day because I could see no reason not to. I learned how to repair a flat, how to adjust my brakes, saddle height, derailleurs, &c., because I had to. My bike started to fall apart all of a sudden, it seemed, because I was riding it much more, & because I had enjoyed startlingly good luck in Portland. I amassed a small bag of tools, which I kept with me at all times.

My fourth (or maybe fifth) group ride in Los Angeles.

Later still, I discovered Midnight Ridazz. It took me about four months after I started riding every day to learn that thousands of other riders were doing the same all throughout the city, the Valley, Orange County, the Westside, the Eastside. Bikes were everywhere, but they had been invisible, even to me. In retrospect, this is almost inconceivable. Riders in Los Angeles are the most tight-knit group of people I've ever come across, anywhere, & the most welcoming. (I was jumped into a bike gang on my third ride, by SP00K.) How did I miss this? Now, I'm (unofficially) a member of three bike gangs. There is no rivalry; we all go to each others' birthday parties.

Ridge Way Bike House turns 2.

I don't think bikers in Portland are as galvanized. I figure it's because bikers are as common as the roses that grow untended there. Like their roses, it's just as beautiful a thing, but it's not so very special. In Los Angeles, riding a bike is a strange thing to do. When seeing someone else riding on the road, I look to see if I know them, & often enough I do. If I don't know them, I nod. A tacit acknowledgment that we both know what's up. It's a unifying activity here, whereas in cities where it's more common, it doesn't mean as much.

Another thing: In Los Angeles, riders don't seem to care much about what you ride. I mean, they care — they appreciate a good whip. But I ride with fixed gear riders, geared riders, mountain bikers, BMX tricksters, chopper bike riders, tall bikers, road racers, polo bikers, velodrome rats, & even people who ride recumbents.

Just kidding. Not recumbents.

I rode this bike once. ONCE.

Every day is a custom bike show. Every night is a ride, usually several. Alleycats every weekend. Name a holiday — Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, your birthday, your dad's birthday, Arbor Day. There's a ride that day. Ahh, enthusiasm. It's fucking scintillating.

SCINTILLATING RIDES:

The Ride with No Name
The Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time
C.R.A.N.K. MOB (The Wonder Year)
Westside Mosey
ROB010100100101010TZ
Midnight Ridazz (official) rides
Wolfpack Hustle
Cub Camp
All those rides that wound up on the beach in the middle of the night, & then there was swimming, & Trouble

Go ride.

Love,
Katie

listed

Twitter's been offering lists. (This is not really news — it's been going on for some time.) Opens up a whole new world of people, their opinions, & what they're eating for breakfast without having to follow every damned one & jam up your feed with Cocoa Puffs. It's cool.

Cooler still, I'm listed some times. HOLLA.

Not to scale.

It's interesting to see the order in which I was added to lists. (Top down, newest to oldest, on that list page I lunk to above the chart.) Seems it was my coffee people who decided to sort their people first. Then bikers, then Angelenos, then people who enjoy enjoyment. Generally.

I figure coffee people tend to have varied interests — many of them do outstanding, silly things when they aren't changing the face & the heart of the coffee industry one cup at a time. Bikers, on the other hand, often spend an awful lot of time with other bikers, irrespective of what they do for a living. As such: My coffee pals sorted early because the list feature was more useful to them, & those coffee-people lists are at the bottom of the page. Though I am bike-listed most, bikers are late listers, & so those lists are at the top of the page. Do you see what I'm saying here?

No? Let me be more clear. If the ride posting says the ride leaves at 8, maybe think about getting to the start point by 8. Jesus christ.

Love,
Katie

coffee stops: san francisco (& environs) edition

In order of attendance, based on location:

BLUE BOTTLE
66 Mint Street at Jessie.
SF, CA.

SIGHTGLASS
270 7th Street at Folsom.
SF, CA.
*** Closed. On the Friday after Thanksgiving. What the.***

FOUR BARREL
375 Valencia at 15th.
SF, CA.

RITUAL COFFEE ROASTERS
1026 Valencia Street at 21st.
SF, CA.

BAREFOOT COFFEE ROASTERS
5237 Stevens Creek Blvd
Santa Clara, CA.

Not shown: Barefoot Coffee. We did not walk there.

I am certain there are scads of good shops in the East Bay. But time dictated I limit my tour. Since San Francisco is only 7mi x 7mi, & since there were four known shops I wanted to visit, ... well. Bingo, bango. I would love, also, at some point to wrangle an invitation to tour Sweet Maria's in West Oakland. Let It Be Known.

Love,
Katie

coffee stops

When not witnessing what has got to be the most beautiful wedding ceremony in the history of wedding ceremonies, during which the groom stood watching his future bride wait for Saint-Saens' "The Swan" to begin so she could walk down the aisle & he subtly urged her with nothing but excitement & love to hurry up so he could marry the hell out of her already ("Come on, come on, come on ... "), I was drinking a lot of coffee.

I hit Manhattan at 5pm Friday, was indisposed all of Saturday (with, you know, that gorgeous, simple, elegant, touching wedding), I was back in New York at close to noon, & I left for my flight at 6:30. That's roughly nine hours devoted to coffee (& the getting-to of it).

Friday, I covered Manhattan. Sunday was Brooklyn. I had a macchiato at each place & sometimes one other drink. Behold: Where I went, & one notable thing about each place.

GIMME! COFFEE, 228 Mott Street (at Prince & Spring). Crazy friendly staff who picked up on my questions about their beans & took the conversation further still into coffee geekdom's dark, delicious heart.

NINTH STREET ESPRESSO, 700 East 9th Street (at Loisaida). Young whippersnapper standing in front of a chalkboard sign with seven drinks listed. Seven! That's it! I didn't see because I wasn't looking, but I don't remember a station for customers to add cream & sugar to their coffee*.


* What if there were a shop with no cream or sugar, at all? WHAT IF. Wait, I like cream in my Toddy. Damn.

STUMPTOWN AT THE ACE HOTEL, 20 West 29th Street (at Broadway). Stylish, professional, friendly. But not too friendly. At other shops, I felt at ease asking questions about the components of their blends, what kind of machines they were brewing on, &c. But at this place, there was a high-end service air that, while very nice indeed, kept me at a distance. Part of this may have been a function of the physical layout of the place — I'm not particularly tall. The counter, it was tall. Or the baristas are tall, or are raised up on a platform, or something. They were ... higher than me.

MANHATTAN
- - - - - - - - -
BROOKLYN

SOUTHSIDE COFFEE, 652 6th Avenue (at 17th Street). I was served by Intelligentsia's newly-named East Coast Educator, Ramin Narimani! He seemed genuinely excited to meet an Intelligentsia person, & we talked shop for a good long time. I hope he swings through Los Angeles, as he's a helluva chap.

GIMME! COFFEE, 495 Lorimer Street (at Powers). Chock fulla customers who stood at the espresso bar & talked (about coffee, mostly). The barista was in the middle of giving coffee recommendations in Los Angeles when I walked up to the bar!

CAFE GRUMPY, 193 Meserole (at Diamond). HUGE space with two rooms — small tables out front & larger tables in a more brightly-lit room out back. They've recently started roasting their own beans, though I don't know if that's what I was drinking — I knew the barista, as it happens, & we spent most of the time talking about people, not beans. Notable for me, but not for you ... I'm sorry.

More beholding:
· New York is no longer the land of dishwater coffee I remember. That was a rough time, the late nineties/early naughts. (It was during this Rough Time that my brother gave me a French Press. Thank you, Brian!)
· I half-expected baristas in New York to be standoffish & wary of my pointed questions, but across the board, they were friendly & informed & happy to talk about their beans, machines, brew methods, &c. Yay.
· It seems there are more specialty coffee shops in Brooklyn than in Manhattan. This makes sense to me; Manhattan is a busy hub, with people rushing to and from all boroughs & even home. (Yes, some people with more money than sense live in Manhattan. I KNOW.) But people live in Brooklyn. It's where they spend their downtime, their weekends. They take time, because they have time, & they are willing to wait a couple minutes for coffee that tastes good. Brooklyn is also where a lot of creative arty types live, & arty types are, by definition, aesthetes, & one aspect of aestheticism is the sense of taste. POW.

That's it! See y'all at Station 2.

very high opera

I flew to New Jersey for my good friends Catherine & Aaron's wedding this weekend. I flew in to New York early, stopped off at a couple recommended coffee places, stayed at a VERY stylie hotel in the very unlikely Upper East Side, took a train to New Jersey, watched a truly beautiful ceremony followed by a wonderful reception (when an architect & a graphic designer get married, no detail is spared attention), hit up several more coffee shops back in New York the next day (more on the coffee stops later), then flew back on a not-quite-red-eye last night.

The flight was supposed to leave at 8:25pm but was delayed, leaving just shy of 11.

The seat I was supposed to take was occupied by one half of a couple not seated together. So I offered to switch. Then I noticed, too late — my new seat had me next to a young mother with a squalling one-year-old baby girl in her arms.

Sequence of thoughts:
· Gonna be a long flight.
· I've slept through a bachelor party raging outside my bedroom door ... I can do this.
· Whoah — this kid has some lungs. Operatic, if it were a toneless, discordant, expression-of-basest-needs kind of opera.
· Why can't this mother calm her child? Oh, right ... because you can't explain to a one-year-old that the change in air pressure is what's causing the weird feeling in her inner ear, which is INSIDE OF HER HEAD, & that the floor churning like that is totally expected & normal & actually kind of funny when you look at all the people lurching down the aisles on the way to the bathroom. The little girl hasn't figured out language yet. It's also probably the first time this has happened to her.
· Why did the mother even BRING such a young child, then? Oh, RIGHT. Because not everyone has local relatives (as I did growing up) or the means to hire someone (as my parents didn't) to watch squalling one-year-olds for weekends. And because it takes a while to teach kids to understand language & to speak it — years, in fact. So if she doesn't have anyone to watch her kid, then she can't go. Confining a new mom to her home FOR YEARS is a surefire way to make said mom one batshit crazy-face emmer effer, which is, like, bad for society. Making mothers crazy makes children crazy, & everyone was a child once.
· Teaching people to be okay with crying babies makes us better people. Babies cry. Everybody, let's toughen up.

If anyone else on that flight was going through the same thought sequence, they didn't get to these last couple points. There were a lot of passive-aggressive stage whispers, disapproving tut-tuts, & throwing of daggers from eyes. (I was guilty of the eye-daggers at first, I admit.) OK, yeah, it was annoying, but who has ever been a squalling one-year-old? Every damned one of us. You were probably a freaking terror every once in a while. It's not a matter of not being able to control your kid (at age one ... hah!); it's not a matter of whether the mom should be allowed out (like I said ... for several years? Cruel & unusual). Kids. They freak out. It's what they do.

So I turned to the mom & asked her how she was doing. And meant it. It led to a bona fide conversation — What were you doing in New York? First time visiting? Where'd y'all go? — you know. Normal conversations you might have with a human being. (Which I almost never do on planes. The potential for your aisle-mate to turn out to be a life coach is too great.) Turns out we both are fans of the same cinema house, & she's hoping to get an advanced degree in film once her little moppet's a little less little.

I hope she does. I think having interests other than every little thing your baby does is healthy & good. And I think it's hard to manage, once you have that squalling one-year-old. It kills me to see people (often but not always women) viewed as this totally other animal once they have children. Mothers & fathers are still people. This one happened to be smart, & funny, & sweet, & very upset that her daughter was causing so much grief to the other passengers. But the dagger eyes & the whispering wasn't helping. Kids pick up on stuff. This one-year-old was sensing her mother's distress, which only amplified her own. Relating to the mother as a human being (instead of instantly categorizing her as "bad mother", or even "good mother" — we don't really have the right to make value judgments on so little information) ... it was clearly a relief, which — surprise, surprise — calmed Skyla down. Empathy. A little bit goes a long way.

Skyla, by the way, is a Hindi name. (Her mom was born in India.) It means "Child of the Heavens." Indeed. Teaching people all kinds of stuff, way up at 30,000 feet. Good work, kid.

coffee, bikes, art

I often moodle around with the idea of integrating the things I care about into something more cohesive. I don't compartmentalize well — I tend to do the hell out of one thing, often to the exclusion of others. (Recently, I've been doing the hell out of coffee but trying to keep my fingers in the pool of design, writing, & of course bikes.)

I also wonder if integrating the things I care about into one superthing is just a lazy way of changing the definition of a situation into not-a-problem rather than solving the problem.

And then I wonder if that's bad.

My sister, who is amazing, moved to Cambodia (!) when she was 25 (!!!) & started a non-profit micro-loan organization primarily for disabled people, who are severely discriminated against in Cambodia. (I could write a book about that.) The grass-roots non-profit, internationally funded & locally staffed, had a café as its public-facing element. You could help out by eating a cookie, or you could sit with that cookie & learn more, see where your own skills fit in to their current projects, or you could donate a few riel. She integrated cooking (specifically baking), human rights, Cambodia, & her incredible ability to talk to anyone about anything, into something truly groundbreaking. She changed the way people thought about charity, not to mention helped countless people get back on their feet with their own good ideas & their own two hands. Or one hand, depending on their disability.

But she didn't study baking, she worked at a bakery in college. She didn't study international relations, she took a vacation & fell in love with the region. What she did study was philosophy ... which included a lot of reading & writing about ethics & law, which is important for human rights & advocacy work. And she might be the most empathetic person I've ever met. She didn't really have a plan, not when she first visited Cambodia. But she was prepared when an opportunity presented itself, & she was willing to take a risk. Or nine.

Katie O'Shea c. January 2003, Casablanca Bar (Sihanoukville, Cambodia) — the last time I integrated all my interests, which were: Cambodia, talking to people, books, alcohol, art, comics, & being annoyed by a guy named Hunter (who took this photograph).

Now, I don't see myself changing the world by starting a micro-loan organization in a third-world country anytime soon, but I can take some cues from her, from how she used her many talents & skills for something cohesive & ground-breaking. By doing what I love, all of the time, & well, & being prepared, & then entertaining crazy notions at least as long as it takes to see whether they're viable. Then moving forward with them, or throwing them away.

I may be writing fewer e-mails soon. I may write here more, to update people on what I am & am not doing all in one go. Or I may drop off the face of the earth for a short while as I figure all this out. Even that's not sorted. I've got some work to do. But I've got no plans. Not yet.