These “Coffee Talk” experiences are a way of life for me. It confounds my family when traveling together and I seek out coffee shops. But it all makes perfect sense to me. My childhood home in NJ was a couple miles from a Nestle coffee factory in Freehold, which Bruce Springsteen writes about in his 2016 autobiography. As you may know, our sense of smell is the strongest of the five senses for memory recall. Bruce writes about how the air in Freehold would be filled with the aroma of coffee from the Nestle plant. It is so formative for him, he opens his book with this fond hometown memory. From the time my family moved to NJ in 1972, we knew when it was going to rain because coffee bean roast would be wafting through the heavy air in our neighborhood. For gifted storyteller Bruce and for me, it’s very meaningful to our respective childhoods.
Coffee throughout my adult life has been a wonderful shared experience for Chris and me. My mother had fun calling us “Frasier and Niles”. The parallels are quite funny and disturbing, all at the same time. Chris aka “Frasier” liked to be the center of the universe. “Niles” aka me, well suffice it to say, is pretty spot on. The show often takes place inside their Seattle java spot “Cafe Nervosa”, the two bantering about life and whether or not their lattes were made properly. My mother was “Martin”, the father character, unpretentious and down-to-earth, she needled us as “Yuppies” and doled-out old fashioned wisdom from her well-worn recliner. I could scare you with all the parallels, but alas that is not the point (and Margot is cringing at the thought of being compared to Niles’ wife Maris, who never appears on screen!). The point is coffee shops are where people are often at their best or where problems get solved. Starting a new day or re-energizing for the afternoon. Yes, we are drawn to these places by the addictive nature of coffee, but there is a sense of community and optimism that exists. In that spirit, it is very noteworthy that CRI will be opening The Bridge On Main in 2025, a welcome center in Bridgeport for returning citizens and a collaboration of agencies all seeking to assist the under-employed and unemployed in the community. One of the amenities…a cafe staffed by CRI clients called Justice Coffee. Drop the Mic.
