I wrote in my previous post about coffeehouses in Fredonia, NY.  I compared a coffeehouse to a bar, but with a bar, it is too close or too far for comfort.   A packed bar is stop-and-go, a mingling of energies and combinations.  A Wall Street trading floor, too much chaos for my taste.  This may work, that doesn’t, on to the next person or idea.  Too few people, and everyone is stranded in their corners.  Sitting on a stool is not comfortable for long.  If there were La-Z-Boys in a bar, we would all be passed out and drooling. 

A coffeehouse is quiet, intimate, and invites connection which can sometimes lead to rich friendship.  I have connected and reconnected in coffeehouses.  I met my friend Erik at Terracotta in Alfred.  He is the older brother I never had.  We bonded over music and food.  I had my first sushi experience with him.  He lives in Colorado now with his wife and infant son.   

One of my closest friends is Meg.  She looks like she stepped out of a L.L. Bean catalog, a sporty yet delicate blonde.  We met at the Brown Bean and our ying-yang combo worked right away.  She is Grace Kelly to my Elizabeth Taylor, cool and observant while I flirted and flitted (damn that Gemini rising).    We are both Pisceans.  Most of my friends are fellow Pisceans.  They make sensitive, thoughtful friends.

Another Piscean is Nat, the friend I mentioned in the previous entry.  We became closer a few years ago.  She is a coffee fiend and lives in Seattle, the king city of coffeehouses.  I visited her in March 2008 for our birthdays.  If you ever visit Seattle, please please PLEASE do NOT go to Starbucks.  Skip the corporate chains altogether and cozy yourself into a local coffee place.

I fabulously drank out there.  I had my first espresso at Espresso Vivace Roasteria.  It was well-rounded and almost sweet.  I swiftly followed that with a mocha.  Slurp, slurp, slurp down the hatch.  We had the cupcake birthday experience with coffee.  Coffee goodness is everywhere and anywhere in this city.  Here is a cup artistically done, even for a place known for their cupcakes. 

My first teahouse experience happened there.  A teahouse is coffeehouse lite.  People come into a coffeehouse for deep and serious comfort, whether to engage or get some work done.  A teahouse is a little more lighthearted.  The place was set almost down in a basement, white purity with a wide variety of clear glass jars full of tea hanging on the wall behind the counter.  When the tea was brought out, it was an operation, a ritual.  A full glass teakettle for each individual settled on a tea light apparatus.  Nat taught me how to knit, though I have completely forgotten how.  We ate tea cookies too.  It was very sweet.

Baltimore has a teahouse I like also, called Teavolve.  Joe (yet ANOTHER Piscean) and I went one day to soothe ourselves after cupcakes (of course) and a wander through Inner Harbor.  It was a calming cap on a cool day. 

So I am a rabid coffeehouse-ite.  And I am a rabid teahouse-ite.  It is what Audrey Hepburn said in Breakfast in Tiffany’s ABOUT Tiffany’s.  “…Calms me down right away.  The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there.”  But these houses aren’t proud.  If you have a few bucks for a cup of something, you’re in.