Sunday, June 24, 2007
New WP Retail Space -- coffee shop possibility?
Bleary eyed, we picked up a few Sunday morning groceries at Randall's and noticed a sign for 5k sq. ft. of retail space going in at the south edge of the parking lot. Has that sign always been there? I can't remember. But it has a phone number on it. Someone should call to see if there are plans for the space and who has them.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Meeting for Coffee, Drinking Beer
A small group of people met last night at Thunderbird Coffee to discuss coffee shop ideas -- and the first thing we noticed was that 3 of the 4 drinks ordered were beer. Can you blame us? They serve Fireman's #4. We chuckled about that.
But the beer also gave shape to the first point of the discussion that followed, which was that whatever the place is, it should also be able to sell beer. Holly, a new mom, recommended that it be a kid-friendly place, given that the baby potluck mafia in WP has swelled to several hundred. Emile and Stacy explained why roasting your own coffee (rather than purchasing it wholesale) is more cost-effective in the long run; Emile is a coffee roaster who currently manages a coffee shop in Westlake, so he had the most experience of all. (He also wants to get back into the roasting game.) Kristin says she noticed two signs in a window at Briarcliff & Westminster by the CVS, one promising fresh donuts, the other new tires. (But no coffee.)
We split up after assigning some small tasks and scheduled another meeting for the same time and day in two weeks.
It doesn't seem that anyone is wedded to cooperative principles philosophically; it's more a practical way to organize a start-up. The whole thing has an outsider business (as in "outsider art") feel to it, which I love as much for its simple faith in entrepreneurship as the absence of any qualms about commerce. Some old professor wrote to the WPNA listserv trying to tar me as anti-business because I was making an argument for local business/brands over national brands; it's impossible to shop anywhere that's not tainted, he wrote. Needless to say, I never said anything about taint and corruption.
I'd like to say that I'm an amateur connoiseur of business models. To prefer the local business over the national corporation is to prefer a certain kind of mechanism, not for any ideological reasons, but for ethical and even aesthetic ones. There's a subtle way in which arguments about capitalism and collective action by people of a certain generation froze during the Cold War, by people whose brains were left behind by glasnost, perestroika, and Clinton's Third Way. Where you were during the dotcom boom plays a part, I think. Before the World Wide Web hit, the greatest minds of my generation were stuck in office jobs, temping, slacking off, playing rock and roll. Without the Web, we, or they, would have stayed crushed under a Baby Boomer hegemony. The Web didn't create entrepreneurship. But it did empower the DIYism of the age.
That has given us -- me -- whatever -- a taste for the business as a thing of beauty, a mechanism or a contraption that shows the influence of the hands that produced it. So the point isn't only that you walk in, put down your money, and somebody hands you a cup of coffee. What also has to be compelling is the story of where that coffee comes from, where you walk in to, and how it came to be.
It's no surprise that everyone at the coffee meeting was under 40.
UPDATE: Let me clarify the point about taint and corruption. I am willing to accept that sizable human and environmental costs are exacted for modern American lifestyles, but that's no reason to throw all commercial activity into the same bin, to denigrate it all. The old professor was saying, it's all tainted, so why differentiate one business from another? Who cares if the coffee is Starbucks or not? I think that's foolish and naive.
But the beer also gave shape to the first point of the discussion that followed, which was that whatever the place is, it should also be able to sell beer. Holly, a new mom, recommended that it be a kid-friendly place, given that the baby potluck mafia in WP has swelled to several hundred. Emile and Stacy explained why roasting your own coffee (rather than purchasing it wholesale) is more cost-effective in the long run; Emile is a coffee roaster who currently manages a coffee shop in Westlake, so he had the most experience of all. (He also wants to get back into the roasting game.) Kristin says she noticed two signs in a window at Briarcliff & Westminster by the CVS, one promising fresh donuts, the other new tires. (But no coffee.)
We split up after assigning some small tasks and scheduled another meeting for the same time and day in two weeks.
It doesn't seem that anyone is wedded to cooperative principles philosophically; it's more a practical way to organize a start-up. The whole thing has an outsider business (as in "outsider art") feel to it, which I love as much for its simple faith in entrepreneurship as the absence of any qualms about commerce. Some old professor wrote to the WPNA listserv trying to tar me as anti-business because I was making an argument for local business/brands over national brands; it's impossible to shop anywhere that's not tainted, he wrote. Needless to say, I never said anything about taint and corruption.
I'd like to say that I'm an amateur connoiseur of business models. To prefer the local business over the national corporation is to prefer a certain kind of mechanism, not for any ideological reasons, but for ethical and even aesthetic ones. There's a subtle way in which arguments about capitalism and collective action by people of a certain generation froze during the Cold War, by people whose brains were left behind by glasnost, perestroika, and Clinton's Third Way. Where you were during the dotcom boom plays a part, I think. Before the World Wide Web hit, the greatest minds of my generation were stuck in office jobs, temping, slacking off, playing rock and roll. Without the Web, we, or they, would have stayed crushed under a Baby Boomer hegemony. The Web didn't create entrepreneurship. But it did empower the DIYism of the age.
That has given us -- me -- whatever -- a taste for the business as a thing of beauty, a mechanism or a contraption that shows the influence of the hands that produced it. So the point isn't only that you walk in, put down your money, and somebody hands you a cup of coffee. What also has to be compelling is the story of where that coffee comes from, where you walk in to, and how it came to be.
It's no surprise that everyone at the coffee meeting was under 40.
UPDATE: Let me clarify the point about taint and corruption. I am willing to accept that sizable human and environmental costs are exacted for modern American lifestyles, but that's no reason to throw all commercial activity into the same bin, to denigrate it all. The old professor was saying, it's all tainted, so why differentiate one business from another? Who cares if the coffee is Starbucks or not? I think that's foolish and naive.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Coffee Meeting
An informal meeting has been set to discuss some ideas and ways to move forward.
If you are interested in participating/contributing, please join us:
Monday, June 18
7:00
Thunderbird Coffeehouse
If you are interested in participating/contributing, please join us:
Monday, June 18
7:00
Thunderbird Coffeehouse
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Coffee Shop Petition
Aide of WP has started a petition to get the corporate HQ of the Speedy Stop at 51st and Berkman to put in a coffee shop in their planned expansion. If you're interested, you can find the petition here. 
(via the Windsor Park list)
(via the Windsor Park list)
Monday, June 4, 2007
Windsor Park Gets a New Coffee Shop Rumor!
Windsor Park is abuzz with new rumors of the coffee source in Mueller, which will supply all those doctors and nurses, all those Best Buy employees, all those residents of David Weekley homes, and, yes, should they care to venture across 51st, the denizens of Windsor Park.
Will it be Jo's? A new El Chilito, called El Norteño? Epoch East?
No, it will be a Starbuck's.
Friends shopping in one of the new stores heard that Starbuck's will be moving into one of the retail spaces on that side of the development. I've long said, hey, it could be Starbuck's, I don't care, I want coffee in Windsor Park. But I've changed my mind. And not about coffee. After seeing all the other retail crap in Mueller, I began to crave even more retail from that brand we know and love, the Keep Austin Weird brand (oh, what the hell, let's just call it KAW, the KAW brand). But no.
Fortunately, you say, there WILL be a coffee shop in Windsor Park! The Migrant!...No, the Vagrant...What's it going to be called? The Transient?
Oh, yes, the Nomad.
Apart from the name of the place -- which surely will be mistaken for a day labor site -- a commenter reports that it won't, in fact, be a coffee place. It will be a bar.
The search continues, people. Capital, o capital, wherefore art thou?
Will it be Jo's? A new El Chilito, called El Norteño? Epoch East?
No, it will be a Starbuck's.
Friends shopping in one of the new stores heard that Starbuck's will be moving into one of the retail spaces on that side of the development. I've long said, hey, it could be Starbuck's, I don't care, I want coffee in Windsor Park. But I've changed my mind. And not about coffee. After seeing all the other retail crap in Mueller, I began to crave even more retail from that brand we know and love, the Keep Austin Weird brand (oh, what the hell, let's just call it KAW, the KAW brand). But no.
Fortunately, you say, there WILL be a coffee shop in Windsor Park! The Migrant!...No, the Vagrant...What's it going to be called? The Transient?
Oh, yes, the Nomad.
Apart from the name of the place -- which surely will be mistaken for a day labor site -- a commenter reports that it won't, in fact, be a coffee place. It will be a bar.
The search continues, people. Capital, o capital, wherefore art thou?
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