Milwaukee Specialty Food and Coffee

Eating My Words, With Soap in My Mouth

When Starbucks first introduced the pourover option, a dedicated reader pointed out that the pourover coffee served at the S. 27th and W. Oklahoma Starbucks--across the street from where he works--is very poor. Coincidentally, I ended up there today after a Wal-Mart run and can affirm that the pourover I received is the worst I've ever had at any Starbucks. Initally, it tasted like nothing so much as soap, then improved somewhat towards the bottom of the cup.

Reflections of Madison

For all of my real or perceived crankiness in evaluating Southern Wisconsin's coffee scene, rarely do I go to a coffeehouse and simply think it sucks. Right now, I'm in one such place. It's an old granddaddy as coffeehouses go, Madison's Espresso Royale. Seems like a tourist trap, and I guess this is a city of intellectual "tourists," as it were. For all my pro-pedestrian views, I'll cede the point that these kinds of dense, pedestrian-oriented areas don't exactly create Darwinian conditions for coffeehouses. Those Darwinian conditions exist in a place like Milwaukee County (at least west of the Milwaukee River), where customers can get in their car and drive to the next cafe relatively painlessly. I'm drinking a soy latte that at least makes up for in volume what it lacks in high-quality taste.

More discouraging was my visit to St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church for the Saturday evening Mass. Speaking of differences between Madison and Milwaukee, another is that Milwaukee's Catholics (of whom I am not one, at least not officially) definitely enjoy the funkygroovy stream of Rome-based religion. You'd think Madison would be the more religiously liberal place, but this Mass had a markedly retro bent--I'd call it  dreary in a way I've never quite experienced in a Catholic church before. The hymns were sung at dirge tempo, and the priest gave this interminable, boring homily during which he lost his train of thought twice. It's odd that in a Madison parish, I would encounter the kind of tedium I grew up with in my childhood church.

In our times--and in this place--I find that particularly tragic. The momentous events of last year were broadcast from here to the entire nation, and perhaps even the world. In no place is the debate over renegotiation of the social contract playing out as much as it is here. I looked back with some sadness at the world as I saw it with nineteen or twenty-year old eyes during my first trips to Madison. Here more than anywhere, the civic realm, academia and religion coalesced into a soaring worldview, and it was thrilling to fantasize about it. Twenty years later, religion and the humanities seem to be asleep in the conductor's car, having long since relinquished the wheel. I think the challenge for those who feel passionately about such things is to find a way for the treasures of the mind and spirit to cut through the crapola--the phones and Facebook and, heck, the blogs, which all have their rightful place but have somehow turned us into a nation of inattentive live-ers.

Am I Late for the Madison Protests? Why Is Everyone in the Coffeehouse?

Hey, I finally made it to Madison for the protests. Am I too late?

 No, the woman on the left isn't wearing a burqa, it's just really cold today. I'm at Steep & Brew drinking a super-delicious mug of Colombian coffee. I'm going to try to make this a five-coffeehouse visit--it's been that kind of week. This would be number two.

Muffin McFun

I accidentally came across what appears to be a pop culture niche: celebrities in old McDonald's commercials. Here's one with Will & Grace's Megan Mullaly and Roseanne's John Goodman:

That's Gotta Hurt

Several models of the Tassimo brewer are being recalled. Apparently the feature of the machine that makes it so attractive to me--its high-pressure brewing method, similar to that of a conventional espresso machine--is also its downfall. Owners can contact the manufacturer to obtain a new part that holds the T-Disc. The espresso T-Discs themselves are also subject to a recall.

President Kennedy

I’m sitting in an Indian take-out place watching news coverage of former Presidential intern Mimi Alford’s allegations about her affair with President Kennedy.  It reminds us that in the days before laptops, people unfolded their real laps eagerly. The show was preceded by a sitcom that portrayed (or, more accurately, parodied) the state of relationships between the sexes fifty years later.  The sitcom episode’s plot strongly suggested a lesbian threesome.  We’ve learned to consider such things blasé, while the concept of a President screwing his underlings continues to register shock and dismay. Despite our increased tolerance, the real comfort level with sexuality has, I believe, only diminished.

 I’d argue that this results from utter confusion as to what gender and sexuality is or does—not to mention utter confusion about human nature. We’re perfectly OK, it would seem, with the fact that the marketplace slices and dices us into boys and girls to decide whether we prefer wings or yogurt for lunch.  We’re not OK with the idea of a man getting as much sex as he can, or if we are, he’d better be that guy who breathes fire and spits fake blood on stage for a living. What we’d think of a woman who had the same appetite? We’d probably have her star in a reality show too—but most definitely would not be OK with it, as any fifteen-minute visit to Twitter or Facebook reveals.

Few, if any, other areas of life have such a power to set our mood. Discomfort and discontent in the romantic arena seeps into other areas of our lives; conversely, when all is well in our love lives, the rest of life takes on the same rosy glow. I guess I offer no value judgments right now other than to say we should spend more time contemplating that mystery and just kind of being in it, regardless of our current status or level of success.  That’s a much better object of our attention than allegations about a long-dead President, who surely was a cad but who may well have saved our planet from going into the microwave on high.

 

15 Minutes to Bargains

There's slim pickin's in retail and coffeehouses close to where I live and work. I was very happy to rediscover the Target store on S. Chase Ave. I timed the trip and determined that it takes exactly fifteen minutes. First on tonight's agenda was a Tassimo disc restock--a 12-pack of dark roast discs costs about $6.50. There's also an aisle with different kinds of granola bars and other snack bars at clearance prices. I got an 8-pack of Larabars--which ordinarily are very expensive in stores--for about seven bucks. The deal was clinched when I found half-ounce bottles of eye drops for 99 cents. I go through those like there's no tomorrow, and they usually cost three times as much or even more. Tarzhay is officially my favorite store.

Almost maddeningly, I have stellar credit, but (like almost everyone) could use more bucks in the bank. The Tassimo has been a real boon for me, as it's hard to argue with a 85-cent latte or cappuccino--for so little money, anything less than terrible is good enough. Half my Starbucks soy lattes taste worse, like an indistinguishable goop.

God Aren't a Hipster

In Roman Catholic churches across the English-speaking world, awkward, antiquated language has been re-introduced. God is spoken of in the grammatical plural form, similar to the "royal we". ("Oh God, who have. . .") If such constructions were ever understood without mental contortions by English speakers, that time has long passed. Those who are not English majors and/or theology students consider archaic language bizarre.

In the leasing office trailer of a new apartment complex being built close to my apartment and office, full-color advertisements feature stock photos of childless, stylish and svelte hipsters. The promise of not having one's eyes sullied by the sight of a poor minority or lower-class majority person--and, above all, the promise of not hearing the cries of a baby--induce, it would seem, applicants to pay a premium amount of rent. The life proposition being offered to us single folk is that life is simply a mirror to reflect us back to us. When we reach middle age, we might generously take in a cute dog, like that shown in sidewalk signs for condo tours on weekends. (No judgment on that count--I ain't takin' in nothin'!)

The theme that seems to be conveyed is that we don't want to have to deal with non ego-fulfilling reality. There are a wide variety of perfectly legitimate reasons for remaining single, but too often, we singles don't want to have to invest our lives in a child who will likely return nothing but years, if not decades, of rebellion and revolt. On the surface, that's understandable. To be honest, we may also not want to invest our lives in a spouse who likewise may well give us years and decades of revolt--even if it's in doses of a day here and a night on the couch there. When we go into counseling or therapy, we expect all the little soldiers of our brains to be marching in lockstep. Even if there's a little part of us that gives us rebellion and revolt, we don't want it living in our place or even next door.

Reality, we stipulate, is to be this highly orchestrated, highly choreographed pageant with a regal God leading the show. Little do we imagine that God might live on the precipice between the fulfillment we seek (for the ego and otherwise) and the rebellion and revolt we avoid. After all, it is my belief that God could have created the universe such that we would all march in lock-step tribute, as if to some egomaniacal tyrant. But it is not so.

Rather, I believe, God reveals himself in human form as a person who met a cruel and violent death--from which he returned not with vengeance, but with the offer of a covenant (a kind of contract) for others to accept the prospect of goodness that is not returned by our earthly life. In our comfortable Western industrial existence, we forget that the sacramental ritual celebrated every Sunday in many churches is a kind of taking on of that unpleasant fate, or at least its very real possibility--not forever, but for now.

 

 

Chicago

Chicago was the song of my twenties, but Saturday, I think I learned that she and I have fallen out of tune. We're not a match made in heaven in any event, considering how I hate noise and am easily overstimulated. Upon my return, I was in a mood, both due to the overstimulation and the sense of loss I felt over my diminished attraction to Chicago.

Stone Creek Grand Avenue Coffee Lounge

The conditions are optimal, it's true--but the Grand Avenue is doing a good job of seeming less dreary than usual today. Everybody, including yours truly, is in a great mood because of the weather, and we're taking some of our end-of-the-month ka-ching to the Grand Avenue. I'm taking some to Chicago, too. On that note, gotta run!