Last weekend, my dad and I stopped at Northampton Coffee. I was waiting for my customary decaf americano, perusing the muffins, when it hit me: “Hey, I’m supposed to be boycotting this place!” You see, about a year ago, my brother Matt had gone into the same cafe and asked whether the beans were fair trade. “Fair trade?!” the owner scoffed. “That’s not my problem!” Knowing my feelings about non-fair coffee, Matt told me the story, and we knew what we had to do. The boycott was on.
We may not have been so quick to retaliate had we not already waged one successful campaign. In 2005, not long after Matt moved to Seattle (when I was still living there), he got a job at a restaurant called Local. He was happy because it seemed like a cool spot, and finding a job in a new city is always hard. But the joy would not last. Upon reporting for his first day of work, Matt was informed that he had already been fired. No justification. They had just hired too many people. Oops!
We called an impromptu brothers’ meeting in the front seat of his Honda. Clearly we couldn’t patronize the restaurant, but was there anything else we could do? Yes, there was. We resolved not only to tell people the story of Local’s bad behavior but also, and more importantly, to open the car window every time we drove past the offender and scream what became our rallying cry: “LOCAL SUCKS!”
In the waning days of 2005 and throughout 2006, a pedestrian near the intersection of Olive and Denny in Seattle would no doubt hear that exhortation–”Local sucks!”–as a gray Civic SI with a robot dashboard ornament or a blue VW Golf with a vestigial Howard Dean bumper sticker zoomed by. We hurled the insult while driving south, while driving north, with music playing, with stereo silent, out of front window, rear window, and sunroof. When we got on the highway, when we needed a $4 juice from Whole Foods, when we set course for the Space Needle or Pike Place Market or the Puerco Lloron or that weird vegan hot dog place next to the convention center–any place that might take us past our nemesis–we threw the bomb: “LOCAL SUCKS!”
In early 2007, I was ascending Olive Way in my hatchback cum bomber, preparing for a raid. I dutifully opened the ordinance hatch (rolled down the driver’s window), turning my head to the left. My mouth was open and my vocal cords abuzz when I saw it: the steaming rubble of a thwarted enemy base. Local was dark. We had won.
Two years later, as I stared at a bran muffin, I knew I had made a grave mistake. Never in our campaign against Local had we even stepped foot inside. Now, by purchasing an americano at Northampton Coffee, I had committed the cardinal sin. All I could do was hope for a stroke of luck, a divine reprieve. I asked the barista, “Where do you get the beans?” Cheerily, she replied, “We get them from Barrington Coffee. It’s a more-than-fair-trade kind of thing.”
“Say what?” I thought. Had Matt been wrong? Had he led us into this fight based on false intelligence, leaving us the shameful choice between an admission of our incompetence and the prosecution of a war under false pretenses? “It can’t be!” I told myself. “Matt would never be so cavalier. He would never waste our powers on an illusory threat. Not my brother.” But back in the car, with my dad, my mind was not on the rich, dark asset I now possessed but on how we got into this mess and how we would get out.
My dad, who has won many a battle himself (in the 90′s, he got smoking banned at the offices of Monarch, a large insurer where we worked), and whom I credit with giving me and my brother whatever genes control indignation and perseverance, had not heard the Local story and, indeed, was not aware of the pending cafe boycott. I told him everything.
“Jonah,” he said, “Don’t you see?”
“See what, Dad?”
“Matt was never wrong. They did serve normal coffee before. They changed because of you.”
His words were like a revelation: I never expected to hear it, but when I did, I knew it to be true. My brother and I had won, again.
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a fine tale, jonah. and i may see a third boycott on the horizon. you’ve got me pondering my own morning coffee routine, a routine i’ve settled quite happily into–smugly, even–over the past few months. disappointed with the high-end but low-impact coffee at greene grape provisions (it put me into a stupor–no way to start the workday) i ambled one morning over to marquet patisserie, a bizarre “french” place across the street. what intrigued me was how unpretentious it was. the decor (bunches of plastic grapes hanging from faux-brick walls), the music (journey, barenaked ladies), the service (a friendly ecuadorian couple, way more inviting than those ornery baristas at GGP): it was all so refreshingly un-hip. not to mention, the coffee gave me a nice boost. i’ve become a loyal patron, stopping in at least thrice weekly, and taking pride in having found the least cool (i.e. the coolest) coffee spot in fort G.
never once, though, in all my coffees–small, large, medium, iced, with skim milk, with whole, with sugar both processed and in the raw–have i stopped to ask myself: From whence cometh these beans? i’ve got a funny feeling you wouldn’t like the answer; there’s nothing “fair-trade” about the vibe in this place. have i been sacrificing ethics for image? i have some thinking to do.
Geez, Shoob, I didn’t mean to make you doubt your morning routine. I know how hard it can be to develop one and how traumatic a change can be. I’m sure Matt can too. So, with a nod to my brother, let me argue against my prior argument and try to convince you to stick with the Ecuadorians.
Firstly, although I do prefer fair coffee, the primary reason for the Noho Coffee boycott was not the beans’ provenance but the owner’s attitude. He should know better than to get angry at customers, and he should be prepared to answer questions about fair trade, especially since he lives in liberal-hippie Northampton. If he had answered nicely, Matt and I probably would have shopped there less, but we wouldn’t have given it the full Burke smackdown.
Secondly, I do believe, my dear sister, that there are many factors to consider when developing a morning routine, some of which trump responsible consumerism. The most important is comfort. If you’re not happy with your morning, the rest of your day will sag, and any good you would have created by buying, say, fair beans will be outweighed by your sour mood the rest of the day.
Now, even if you disagree with point two, as many readers will, consider point three. And that is, that even if moral issues are paramount, there may be other moral considerations that trump conscientious purchasing. You alluded to some of these, Shoob, in your comment. Is it right to endure all those negative qualities you witnessed at Greene Grape: pretentiousness and too-hip music, aloofness and weak coffee? Is it not a greater crime to tug at these subtle tears in our social fabric than to buy a less than perfect bean? I submit to you, Shoob, that, perhaps unwittingly, you made the correct moral calculation.
Also, I asked the Greene Grapies once if the beans were fair trade and they were like, “Uh, I don’t know. Do you want small or medium?”
As your brother, Shooob, I’m glad to see you wrestling with these questions. Keep thinking.
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[...] not at the big, boring Strand. They had better watch out or they might end up the victim of another Burke boycott. Posted by jonah on Wednesday, July 7, 2010, at 7:44 pm. Filed under none. Follow any responses [...]
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