A sweet deal

I hope you were able to take advantage of Ben and Jerry’s Free Cone Day today, but if you weren’t, I have another deal to let you know about. It’s not an offer from me—I’m just passing along the information.

I have mentioned before that world coffee prices are going up—way up. As of today, green coffee prices are up over 100% from a year ago. In other words, prices have more than doubled in that time. The big coffee companies, like Starbucks and Folgers, have raised their prices several times in the last year. Many of the local roasters have raised their roasted bean prices too. Some have shifted from selling 16oz bags to selling 12oz bags for the same price, instantly raising the price per pound by 33% (some are even selling half-pound bags for nearly the same price!).

Therefore, I was surprised today when I stopped in at the Spunky Monkey café (that’s right, the super funky Spunky Monkey) and found that they were selling organic and fair trade coffees (which generally cost more to begin with) for $11 per pound. I haven’t seen full 1-lb bags of coffee in other local shops for a couple months, certainly not for $11.

There were three coffees available, all roasted yesterday: a fair trade/organic coffee from Peru, a fair trade/organic from Ethiopia (Sidama) and an organic coffee from Brazil. At this price, the coffees are as good a deal as you will find from a local roaster.

When I asked the owner how he could offer such a deal, he admitted he was probably going to have to raise prices soon. So if you are looking for a great deal on some local fresh-roasted coffee, you should stop in at the Spunky Monkey to get some before he does. 

Not sure how long this will last

Who says the sun doesn't shine in PDX?

You know it’s been a gray spring when the sun comes out one day and it makes the front page of the newspaper with the headline “Scary Yellow Globe in Sky Not Going to Stick Around” (as if we expected it to). Yes, it’s been a bit dreary around here. According to the National Weather Service, before last Friday (April 8th), it had been 41 days since our last cloud-free day. The graph below, from The Oregonian, accompanied the story.

Looks like Portlanders are in serious need of some vitamin D

You can see that we haven’t seen the sun much since February 25th, and that any sun we did have was only fleeting. Hopefully, Friday was a sign of good things to come and summer is just around the corner!

A good omen?

Extracto Il Secondo

After spending time with the supermodel at Jim and Patty’s, I headed westward down Fremont Street, en route to the Albina branch of the Multnomah County Library. As I was walking, a  whiff of freshly-brewed coffee tickled my nose. It smelled wonderful, so I followed my nose toward the scent and stumbled upon another quality Portland café, Extracto 2*.

The sign is easy to find

[*Confession: That’s not exactly how things happened. What really happened was that I was kind of lost, so I checked my location on my phone, realizing that I was close to Prescott Street. Prescott Street stuck out in my mind as the location of the café (these days I tend to remember Portland streets by the cafés that are on them). I was only a few blocks away, so instead of going to the library, I headed for the café.]

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Walking for Water in the Rain

Despite the cold, rainy and windy weather, there was a good turnout for the Walk for Water in downtown Portland yesterday. The official figures are not in yet, but from my estimation, approximately 800 people gathered at the covered plaza at the World Trade Center to take part. We were there to raise money to build a well in a village in either Kenya or Malawi.

Walkers enjoyed free coffee from Portland Roasting and some snacks provided by local businesses. Five members of Boka Marimba, a marimba and percussion group, enthusiastically entertained the crowd with their energetic music.

Boka Marimba

Several non-profit groups also set up informational booths to let people know what they were up to and to sign up new members. Upon seeing the booth for PHLUSH, an organization that campaigns for the construction of more public toilets in Portland, Bill Mikesell, who was photographing the event, quipped that “in Portland, even the public toilets have an advocacy group.”

Of course they do. . . is that weird?

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Case Study Coffee - Coffee on the Rocks

It had been a while since I had been to a new café, and I was feeling particularly motivated to try something new, so I headed to Northeast Sandy Boulevard to check out Case Study Coffee. Case Study is one of the newer cafés in Portland, having opened only eight months ago. The café sent two baristas to the 2011 Northwest Regional Barista Championship. Neither of the baristas made the finals, but the fact that such a new café would send two competitors to the competition shows that Case Study is serious about coffee.

Case Study Coffee

While it may be fairly new, Case Study appears to not be a secret. During my time in the café, a steady stream of customers came through the door. The café was fairly loud—not with music, but with people talking. I overheard people brainstorming about their next big creative venture [on a side note, have you seen Portlandia’s sketch about creative ventures? It takes place in one of the cafés we have already reviewed here]. Several Laptopistanis were glued to their screens and some of them also had their smartphones glued to one ear. I watched a writer distractedly go between staring at her notebook and checking her email on her iPhone. It looked like she either had writer’s block or she was hoping that the phone would give her a legitimate reason to not be productive.

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