#Trust30 Challenge Day 2

The prompt for today’s #Trust30 Writing Challenge expects a short creative output. It was written by Liz Danzico:

“If ‘the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tracks,’ then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays. How would you describe today using only one sentence? Tell today’s sentence to one other person. Repeat each day.”

Here’s my sentence:

“It’s raining today, but dammit, that sun is going to come out one of these days—right?”

The sentence is both literal and metaphorical. It not only speaks to the actual weather today and the promise of an 80° day in the forecast three days from now, but it also reflects a determinedly optimistic, but uncertain, attitude about the future.

I’m not sure I see a lot of value in this exercise, but it did make me think a little about my attitude. Maybe that was the point. Do you have any thoughts? Please share them (you can also share your sentence for today in the comments below).  

Coffee, Rumor and Innuendo

Last Friday, I posted a link to what I said was a sign of the impending rapture—that Stumptown Coffee was in negotiations to be bought out by Starbucks. There was absolutely no truth to the rumor whatsoever, so you can imagine the surprise I felt today when I went online to read the latest coffee news and one of the first things to come up was a story claiming that Stumptown had been sold (though not to Starbucks).

Todd Carmichael, the founder of LaCombe Torrefaction, an East Coast-based coffee company, wrote an article for Esquire that Stumptown’s Duane Sorenson had “sold his life’s work to the highest bidder.” Needless to say, this caused quite a stir in the coffee blogosphere and Twittersphere. Could it really be that Stumptown, Portland’s most famous coffee company who seemed to be everything but corporate, could be ‘selling out?’ What would that mean for Portlanders who cannot stand the idea of supporting a “corporate” coffee company? The idea seemed an anathema to many people.

There were several reasons to be skeptical about the article’s accuracy. Carmichael likes to make fun of the hipster coffee culture, as evidenced by this article, so it is not surprising that he took a shot at Stumptown. Also, the tone of the article and lack of evidence in it, lead one to believe that Carmichael, whose company is a direct competitor to Stumptown, does not like the fact that Stumptown is expanding on the East Coast and was looking for a way to give his rival some bad publicity among the anti-corporate crowd.

In response to the news, Willamette Weekly dug up a document showing that Stumptown Coffee Corporation, which is a separate entity from Stumptown Coffee Roasters, did apply for an  amendment to authority with the Oregon Secretary of State at the end of April. The new agent for the company is Alexander Panos, a managing director at TSG Consumer Partners, a private equity firm based in New York. In other words, there was a small bit of evidence behind the rumors.

However, the document does not address any questions about any relationship between Stumptown and TSG. It is impossible to tell from that document what Stumptown’s plans are, and Carmichael’s speculation is premature, unless he has other information. Esquire, if it wants to be taken seriously, needs to make sure there is more evidence before an article like this is published, especially when the author has a financial stake in a rival company.

Update: In the latest news this afternoon, also from the Willamette Weekly, Stumptown responded to the article, saying that it did open itself up to some outside investment to help fund its expansion, but that Duane Sorenson, Stumptown’s founder, is still in charge. Therefore, Portlanders can relax—Stumptown has not sold out. You do not have to worry about losing another local chain to corporate America.

Update 2 (June 2): Stumptown did allow for some investment by Panos (Sorenson still controls the company) and the plan is to expand into Chicago and San Francisco. The NY Times has the story here.

Update 3 (June 6): Willamette Weekly is today reporting that Stumptown sold 90% of the company to TSG, though it seems like the source is Carmichael. It's hard to know what to believe. . . You can read the story here.

My question is, if Stumptown had sold out, so what? It is Sorenson’s company, after all, and the last time I checked, we still live in the USA, where capitalism is the economic system. If someone wants to build a company and sell it so that he or she can fulfill other dreams, that should be his or her right. There is nothing especially noble about starting a company and staying with it until you die. Times and people change—we have to accept it. Unless, of course, the news is just a rumor or a blogger’s attempt to be funny.

Welcome to the #Trust30 Challenge

This evening I accepted the Trust Yourself Writing Challenge that was sent out by Seth Godin’s Domino Project. It is a pledge to write or create something (and share it with people) every day for 30 days, based on a prompt sent out by a famous (or semi-famous) author. The challenge is in honor of the 208th birthday of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his book Self Reliance. Each day for the next month, I plan to create something and post it on this blog. Some days it will be short and others it will be long, but I will post something every day by midnight relating to the challenge. In addition, I will continue to write about coffee and art and other topics.

Today’s prompt was this: “You just discovered you have 15 minutes to live. Set a timer for 15 minutes and write the story that needs to be written.”

As soon as I clicked the I accept button for the challenge, I immediately had some doubts about my ability to complete the challenge. Why would I want to do something like this? Would I really be able to do it? What was I thinking? Then I told myself to shut up and get to work. There’s no time for doubt, only creating.

I recently read Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, an excellent book that I wish I would have read fifteen years earlier. Had I learned and applied the principles in the book, I am sure that I would have been able to be more successful in reaching my goals in life. The most memorable section for me was the part where Pressfield talks about becoming a professional. One of the things that Pressfield says about professionals is that they do not overidentify with their jobs, meaning that although what they do may be important to them, at the end of the day what they do is not who they are.

When you identify too much with what you do (the amateur mentality), you become so invested in it that the fear of failing paralyzes you. Professionals look at what they do with a cool rationality and as a result, can focus on improving their craft, not worrying about how many failures they have along the way..

I can see how the amateur’s attitude affected me when I used to play basketball. Basketball was so important to me that each missed shot during practice was a sign of a personal failure. Putting this type of pressure on myself to be perfect was counterproductive and led to a lot of self-doubt and negative thoughts. Had I taken more of a professional’s mentality, I would have looked at each practice session as an opportunity to improve my skills, instead of a judgment about how I was.

Trying to be perfect and then getting upset when you are not is not going to make you successful. Working like hell to learn your craft, while continually learning from your mistakes is. This is a lesson I learned way later than I should have, so as I look forward to this 30-day challenge, the goal is not to be perfect, but instead to create something that I feel is worth creating and to improve my writing every day. There may be some hits and misses along the way, but come what may, I’m going to put it out there, because writing is something that I do, it is not who I am.

This is the story that needed to be written today (though I admit it did take a little longer than 15 minutes to write).

 

Coffee highlights of the week plus links

[Note: I just made two corrections to this article. The first was the spelling of the name of the espresso at Oblique. I changed Derailer to the proper Dérailleur. I also had written that Oblique's owner was Jim Chandler. It is not. His name is John. Sorry for the mistakes!]

I tried two different coffees this week that were worth mentioning. The first was an espresso of the Dérailleur Blend at Oblique Coffee. The shot was balanced, chocolaty and super smooth—almost silky. It went down very easy, without any sugar. John Chandler, Oblique’s owner, said that since the weather had become warmer, his espresso machine seemed to really be “dialed in” and was pulling great shots. I’m not sure why that is true, but I would have to agree with him.

The second noteworthy coffee was a cup of Stumptown’s Kenya Gatomboya, brewed on a Clover (normally, you only find Clovers at Starbucks, but Vancouver’s River Maiden Coffee still has one from the early days). Stumptown just released the Gatomboya this week, and the early reviews have been good. The flavors that came through were cherry and butterscotch. Tasty!

Here’s some links to get you through the weekend:

You can no longer get cannabis in the coffee shops of Amsterdam (link), but you can still get coffee in the cannabis shops of Portland. link

Portland Roasting Coffee made it into an article in Sustainable Business Oregon. link

Instead of me discussing rising coffee prices, I’ll let an article at Salon.com do it. link

CNN Money has another analysis of prices that says pretty much the same thing: in the near future they’re only going UP. link

In the other Portland (PWM) this week, Dunkin’ Donuts was selling iced coffee to help support cancer research. link

Time magazine asks if you would hang out in a Subway café. My response? An emphatic no. link

Howard Schultz was in Vancouver, B.C., this week, talking about his company, coffee prices and a multitude of other things. link

You might have heard of a CSA for vegetables, but have you ever heard of one for coffee? link

There’s a movement underway to rid Seattle of disposable coffee cups (yeah, right). link

Enjoy Memorial Day Weekend. Summer is (reportedly) here! #whenits55andrainingthatsnotreallysummer

Kobos Coffee (Part 2) - How Kobos came to PDX

 

[Part 1 of this history can be found here]

Originally from Massachusetts, David Kobos spent many of his years growing up in New York. The pursuit of higher education eventually led him out West, and he spent four years getting a master’s degree from Reed College. After graduating, he taught in Milwaukie for a couple years. During this time, Kobos used to stop in and get coffee from Boyd’s Little Red Wagon.

“That's how I got started drinking real coffee," he said.

After his time in Milwaukie, Kobos moved back to New York, where he got a job as a teacher at a school in the Lower East Side (of Manhattan). In his free time, he began exploring restaurants in Chinatown and Little Italy, which were both nearby the school. He became fascinated with the city’s food and coffee culture and began visiting the shops of the Lower West Side too, where the Shapiro Brothers and the McNulty family were famous for roasting coffee.

At some point during his culinary explorations, Kobos met his future wife and got married. The couple went on a honeymoon to the Pacific Northwest and then returned to the Big Apple. Together, they really got into exploring restaurants. His wife was a good cook, he said, so they began to shop at higher-quality markets, trying to duplicate at home what they had been tasting in restaurants. The couple also drank plenty of coffee and visited all of New York’s famous cafés.

Kobos recalled some of the smells in the neighborhoods where the stores roasted their own coffee:

"There was this one little Italian roaster, down in Little Italy, who used to take one kind of coffee and just burn the hell out of it. You could smell it if you went anywhere near that place,” he said, laughing.

Eventually, the Kobos and his wife decided they needed a change of scenery. Remembering the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, they decided to move across the country to Portland, where they would indulge their love of food and coffee by starting a cookware and coffee retail store (and a family). It was a lot of change in a short amount of time, and their friends were skeptical.

“’You’re doing what?’—that’s what they asked us. They thought we were crazy,” Kobos said, recalling the reactions of his friends and family. “You’ve got a job already. Why would you want to do that?”

Undeterred, the couple moved forward with their plans. However, plans soon changed. The original plan was to ask Boyd’s Coffee to roast coffee beans for Kobos to sell in the store, but when David asked them, they turned him down. It was a pivotal moment for the Kobos story.

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