Buying the Buzz

The coffee machine is slowly replacing the ashtray by the dumpster as the cool place to hang out and talk with friends. With new coffee houses opening all the time, it’s becoming more apparent that there might be something to the coffee thing. Coffee is not your father’s breakfast beverage anymore. It’s becoming the new cigarette.

December 1773, Boston, Mass.: Several Bostonians dressed as Indians board British merchant vessels and hoist crates full of tea into Boston Harbor. Thumbing their noses at the British, they unofficially usher in coffee as “America’s drink.”

Since then, it has been viewed as mostly an “old person’s” drink; relegated to Grandma‘s kitchen. But in recent years, more and more young people are taking to the bean. Coffee houses are springing up all over America, as the beverage is becoming more of a social stimulant than a morning pick-me-up.

Byron Black, a computer graphics instructor at North Lake College, loves the stuff. Reckoning back to his college days, he said, “The cappuccino bar at the University of Dallas was the center of everything intellectual.”

Although Subway sells coffee at its North Lake store, he says he misses having an actual coffee bar on campus.

“It was the hub of conversation and intellectual discourse. A good cup of coffee every day can set the tone. It greases the wheels of discussion,” he added.

Travel a couple of miles down the way to the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and Rochelle, and you’ll find Mug Shots. It’s a new coffee house that was opened two months ago by John and Tracy Shelden.

There you’ll discover two meeting rooms, wireless internet, two computers, a couple of comfy couches and a menu that would wow the most avid Starbucks fan, with beverages ranging from chai to bubble tea, and from a mild cup of brew to a Milkyway Frappe, to go along with different flavored caffeine candies.

After watching a reality show about a couple that opened their coffee shop, the Irving couple decided to give it a go.

“We thought, ‘We can do that’,” said Tracy Shelden, a former paralegal. “We wanted a place where our friends could come and hang out. We have some Girl Scouts who have their meetings here and we have a study group from UTD that comes here and uses our meeting rooms too.”

They have also, on occasion, shown movies and sporting events on their projection TV, on which they plan to show thriller movies on Halloween.

“We’re working on getting a group in here, so we can have live music. And we’ve also been thinking about doing Movieokie,” said Shelden.

Movieokie is a relatively new form of entertainment in which the participants stand in front of a screen showing a movie, and recite the lines along with the film, she explained.

All of that hoopla is a far cry from sitting at the kitchen table, huddled over a steaming cup in the pre-dawn light. But coffee is coffee, and some things never change.

According to many doctors, caffeine has been known to cause nervousness, insomnia, high blood pressure, an increased possibility of heart attack and a plethora of other complications.

But regardless of the health implications, and despite the coffee snobs who won’t drink anything less than gourmet, there are those of us who absolutely need our daily dose.

So I raise my cup to all of you who are willing to risk your health, and relish your morning mud, be it with extra foam, or a low fat, half caf with a sprinkle of cinnamon, or even if it’s black as night. It’s to you that I raise my oversized cup with a cream and two sugars and say, “Cheers, and here’s to Joe.”