come on in, the coffee's on!

"i always have a wonderful time, wherever i go, whomever i'm with."
jimmy stewart as "elwood p. dowd" in harvey (1950)


well hello! welcome to fine cuppa joe -- a blog dedicated to coffeehouse culture (that includes writing, literature, art and photography, music, theatre, off-the-wall discussions and pretty much whatever i feel like posting up) in the "golden triangle" region of cincinnati, lexington and lousiville, or wherever may be a coffeeshop of note.

a little about me:

i'm currently 29 years old, a native of (and once again living in) cincinnati. and yes, i admit it. i'm an addict. total caffeine nut. love it Love it LOVE it!

i hold an MA in creative writing from the university of kentucky. what i want to do with that is anybody's guess at this point.

in the meantime, i write. i sit. i drink my java and meet interesting people.

a little about how i got started:

i've always been a coffee fan -- i mean since i was knee-high to a duck, boy.

when i was little i used to beg my parents to let me have coffee -- usually i had to let them pour me a glass of milk and just add a little coffee to it (my fourth grade teacher gave me the idea after telling our class how her own parents had let her drink 'kiddie coffee' with the grownups after holiday meals). and once i came down after many hours of bouncing off the walls, chipping the paint and eating it, i'm sure my good parents had no regrets. thankfully, we lived in a newish house and i never had to worry about lead poisoning.

ah, but now i'm one a them there REAL GOOD coffee drinkers. i drink it black most days -- more because my near-30-year old metabolism can't seem to handle cream and sugar as well as it used to, but also, i guess, to show off my prowess to the uninitiated (typical reaction: 'ugh! how can you drink it straight like that?!?' my answer: 'i burned off my taste buds in 1999. my kidneys are shrunken and hard like black walnuts').

for me, hanging out in coffeehouses -- when i was 16 and newly mobile -- was a portal to fun, excitement and corruption.

i never went directly home after school -- always over to the grandmama of them all -- sabrina's in montgomery, ohio. more about sabrina's in a later post.

it was a little like hanging out in bars for someone who wasn't old enough to hang out in bars -- the third place, or 'cheers' concept, if you will. i wasn't overly social -- i had friends but i've always been the quiet, documenting sort. i like to people-watch. and in a coffeeshop, you can people-watch until your eyes are bloodshot and you have to pee so bad they could use you as fire hydrant in a pinch.

then, of course, you go to the bathroom -- inevitably decorated with artful, witty (and questionably tasteful) repartee -- remember to wash your hands! -- refill your mug at the station and come back for three more hours of people-watching or bad-poem-composing or music-listening or playing poker for sugar packets with friends who until 10 minutes ago were perfect strangers.

so, what are our goals here?

i'd like to start posting up news and updates about the local coffee scene, with a liberal sprinkling of arts and lit news. if i can get enough of my fellow hopheads together, i'd love to develop a coffeehouse news network -- an electronic community bulletin board, of sorts.

i want to hear from baristas, poets, musicians, novelists, layabouts, students, professors, connoisseurs, local roasters, actors, artists and just plain ol', generally-interested friends.

so, pull up a chair. take a deep, fresh-roasted breath. set a spell. take yer shoes off.

(ok, don't take yer shoes off -- that's probably against the health code. we don't want to get the joint shut down.)

but y'all come back now, hear?