Subject: RE: BS: The Hazards of Coffee - quote I like
From:
Don Firth
Date: 26 Jul 01 - 01:22 PM
A bit of synergy perhaps? A week or so ago I finished some research on the history of coffee and coffeehouses so I could stick some gratuitous background information into the Magnum Opus I'm writing -- a personal retrospective on the folk music scene in the Seattle area and environs during the Fifties and Sixties. With the data assembled, I cobbled this together to introduce a section I had previously written on the first coffeehouses in Seattle. Then I discovered this thread. I thought I'd toss it in and hope you enjoy it. It's kinda long for a post and it still needs to be tidied up a bit, so please forgive me.
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As early as Homer, there were stories of a black and bitter brew that had the power to endow those who drank it with increased alertness, but it was not until much later that the details of the discovery of coffee, comes into sharper focus.
One of the many legends that surround the discovery of this universal solvent of intellectuality and sociability, holds that sometime in the 9th century, an Arab goat-herd named Kaldi noticed that his goats became particularly alert, frisky, and playful after eating the red berries that grew on certain leafy bushes. Kaldi tried a handful of the berries, and soon found himself experiencing a refreshing lift of spirits and a pleasant sense of heightened awareness. He eagerly recommended the berries to his fellow tribesmen, who subsequently agreed that Kaldi's discovery had indeed been a worthy one.
News of these wonderful berries spread quickly. Local monks heard of them, tried them, and noticed that the berries had the salutary effect of producing more alertness and less dozing off during prayer. They dried the berries so they could be transported to other monasteries. There, the berries were reconstituted in water. The monks ate the berries and then drank the liquid.
Coffee berries soon made their way from Ethiopia to the Arabian peninsula where they were first cultivated in what today is the country of Yemen. Coffee then traveled north to Turkey. The Turks were the first to roasted the beans. Then they crushed them and boiled them in water. The result was pretty stout stuff, hardly what we today would call gourmet coffee, but it was well on its way. They sometimes added spices to the brew, such as anise, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom.
Venetian traders carried coffee to the European continent sometime in the 16th century. Once in Europe, enthusiastic imbibers regarded this new beverage as the Elixir of Life and the Invigorator of Thought.
But, as frequently happens when humankind discovers something pleasurable, there emerged those people whose lips are stiff and whose faces are grim. These unhappy souls declared coffee to be "the beverage of infidels" and "the Drink of the Devil." Some members of the Catholic Church called for Pope Clement VIII to ban it. Consider their dismay when the Pontiff, wide awake and alert because he was already a coffee drinker, blessed it and declared it a truly Christian beverage.
The first coffeehouse in Britain, called "The Angel," opened in 1652, not in London, but in Oxford. This is, perhaps, not surprising. After all, Oxford had been a college town since the 12th century. Soon thereafter, coffeehouses began flourishing in London. They swiftly became gathering spots for artists, poets, and philosophers, along with their disciples and groupies. Since coffee at these establishments cost a penny a cup, coffeehouses became known as "penny universities." James Boswell and Samuel Johnson were two well-known coffeehouse habitués.
King Charles II considered coffeehouses to be hotbeds of discontent and a breeding ground for revolt, so in 1700 he banned them. This act nearly caused a revolt. The turmoil was so great that eleven days later he rescinded the ban.
In 1732, Johann Sebastian Bach composed his "Coffee Cantata." The work is an ode to coffee. At the same time, it takes a poke at a movement extant in Germany at the time that sought to forbid women to drink coffee because some people thought it made women sterile.
In the late sixteen-hundreds coffeehouses made their way to the New World: to New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, where they prospered just as they had in England. They were also patronized by musicians, artists, poets and other suspicious and undesirable characters. Such as Tom Paine and Ben Franklin. In fact, when the United States were still "The Colonies," the Continental Congress, in protest against the excessive tax the British levied on tea, declared coffee to be the national drink.
So when coffeehouses sprang up like mushrooms in the dank undergrowth of the 1950s, they were nothing really new; they were just another phase of a centuries-old tradition. This renaissance spread through the previous sites: New York, Boston, and Philadelphia; then it vaulted across the continent to California, particularly to San Francisco, Berkeley, and Los Angeles.
Coffeehouses tended to pop up near college campuses. Many of them became hangouts for students, mostly fledgling artists, writers, poets, and musicians. And hordes of chess players. Occasionally someone with a guitar might be quietly strumming away in a corner. Some places discouraged this sort of thing, but many did not. Many coffeehouses had a small stage, and on certain afternoons or evenings, a jazz combo might be trying out a few things. Or a string quartet, composed of student musicians with dreams of Carnegie Hall would hone their performing skills before a live audience by giving an informal recital. Or there might be a poetry reading. Or poetry and jazz. Some places had a more-or-less resident folksinger. Folksingers were not all that common then, but their numbers were increasing. Most people had heard of Burl Ives and some had heard of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. But the members of the Kingston Trio were probably still in high school and hadn't even met yet.
This was a time when Seattle seemed to be about ten years behind San Francisco in most things cultural. As the fin du decade of the 1950s approached, Seattle was still devoid of coffeehouses. Mention coffeehouses to most people and it conjured up images of lunch counters or Mannings' cafeteria. They were not yet aware that a coffeehouse and a coffee shop were two very different things.
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Then I go on to describe the first coffeehouse to open in Seattle: the Café Encore, on upper University Way in 1958.
If I spent less time piddling around with little digressions like researching the history of coffee and coffeehouses and more time writing about the folk scene in Seattle, I'd get the bloody thing finished a lot sooner -- but I'm on a nostalgia trip, I learn a lot this way, and I'm enjoying it.
Don Firth
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