My friend Marcus has a wallet that tells a story about optimism and disappointment in roughly equal measure. The optimism is represented by approximately eleven loyalty cards from various coffee shops and cafes around San Francisco accumulated over about four years. Each one was accepted at the moment of initiation with the specific hope that…

My friend Clara has a theory about outdoor seating in San Francisco that she developed through years of optimistic attempts and subsequent meteorological disappointment. The theory is that outdoor seating in this city is a promise that San Francisco makes and then renegotiates the terms of without warning. You sit outside because it’s sunny and…

My friend Jonah has been working remotely for three years and has developed what he calls a cafe taxonomy that he maintains with the precision of someone who spends a significant portion of his working life in places that are not his apartment and has strong opinions about which ones make that working life better…

My friend Elena has a specific relationship with online tutorials that she describes as productive procrastination. She watches them. She watches a lot of them. She has watched pour over tutorials, espresso tutorials, latte art tutorials, cold brew tutorials, and at least two tutorials specifically about the bloom in pour over coffee that went into…

My friend Daniel has been trying to make good coffee at home for about four years and has approached the project with the systematic frustration of someone who knows the gap between what he’s producing and what he wants is real and has not been able to close it despite genuine effort. He’s not someone…

My friend Nina works in product management at a tech company in San Francisco and she has what she describes as a lunch problem that she’s been managing for about three years. The problem is not that she doesn’t have time for lunch. She has time. The problem is that she stopped looking forward to…