Got $11 and an hour to kill?
Hi, I'm your coffee shop realtor. My teeth are permanently stained and my left eye never stops twitching. My business cards are written on giant chalkboards with a topical joke that changes as regularly as I feel like it, and I send all of your receipts to your email, which I somehow know.
I eat used coffee grounds.
Looking for a hangout with moody lighting? Great. I know the perfect old pawnshop turned coffee shop. The steel bars outside the window cast the coziest shadows and make for the moodiest bean juicery. But hurry over, there's only room for three people (including the two baristas).
Did I mention I sweat coffee?
I know another shop on the other side of town. It's in a terrible school district. You'll love it. Nobody ever goes there. Not even new moms who join groups of strangers who are also new moms and who are also desperate to talk to anybody, anywhere, about anything. You might see the occasional junkie with Jesus pamphlets. He's what us in the coffee biz call “good people.” We're terrible people.
My pee smells like a K-cup.
Check your email. I just sent you a receipt for our first 10 minutes. I also attached some info about another coffee shop I know with cucumber-cool vibes. It's got natural light for days - well, day - well, as long as the sun is up during the day. But because of that, the temperature stays at a constant 94 degrees. If you can stay hydrated long enough, you'll fucking love the quirky industrial spools they use as tables and the tall stools with no back support. Just don't sit anywhere near anyone who is already there.
I pay prostitutes to drink day-old coffee while I watch.
A lot of my clients work remotely. For that I recommend a former colonial sitting room turned French cafe. The croissants are extremely dry. You'll hate them. Since you'll be hard at work doing marketing or whatever most people do these days, you'll love that this one has an early-'90s printer that accepts Canadian money and only prints in black and white. I assume that'll be helpful for marketing? As will the cafe's crooked shelf of yellowed encyclopedias and board games with missing pieces.
My testicles are coffee beans.
If you're obsessed with coffee shop bathrooms like I am then I highly recommend the shop that has a bathroom mural of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. It'll make you demand equal rice rations for every living thing in the universe before you go back to enjoying the nectar of back-breaking peasant labor. You'll enjoy every drop.
I am coffee.
The only thing is you'll have to share the bathroom and its exclusively cold sink water and hot breath hand dryer with a resident junkie. Fortunately, the junkie has Jesus pamphlets so you have nothing to worry about - probably. Also, the toilet doesn't flush the whole way and there's always a line so you'll just want to maintain an uncomfortable level of dehydration the entire time you're there. Nobody washes their hands. It's fantastic.
I have killed for Folgers. I'd do a lot more for a lot less. I am your coffee shop realtor.