Extraordinary Microcosm: A Morning At The Coffee Shop

August 18th, 2007 at 06:59am Keith Hemstreet 8

This morning I spent some time at my favorite coffee shop. Of all the wonderful places in Aspen, I enjoy it as much as any other.

The coffee shop shares its space with a retail sports store that rents bikes in the summer, skis and snowboards in the winter. It is a simple place, intentionally lacking the lavish décor many tourists have come to expect. The ceilings are exposed. Pipes, fire sprinklers, an air condition duct, and a variety of colored wires somehow form a coherent, functioning system. Coffee mugs dangle from the piping just inside the front door. If you wish to fight for a hook, which is every bit as difficult as finding a place to park, you can purchase your own mug, a few dozen of which sit on a small shelf near the front door.

I always order the same thing, a coffee. But it’s not the coffee that draws me to this place. I actually prefer the coffee at Starbucks. What attracts me to this place is the atmosphere, the people, the conversation.

There is a positive energy that is tangible. Maybe it’s the young people that employ the coffee shop and adjacent store. Kids hardly burdened with responsibility, still young enough to live without the anxieties of adulthood. They watch the clock, compute their wage, make plans for the evening.

There is always music playing from the speakers, often times too loud, but no matter. Today I walked in around 6:45 AM and was greeted by Alice In Chains’ “Jar of Flies”.

“Great choice,” I say to the manager. “This is one of my favorite albums of all time.”

“Mine too.”

“Jar of Flies” is the album I listened to more than any other as my wife and I drove west from Florida to take up residence in Aspen, Colorado. I sang along quietly with the late Layne Staley, “I______ ain’t never coming home,” the lyrics so wonderfully apropos. After a long trek from the east, all of the sensations, complications, and psychological manifestations that have silently haunted you along the way bow subserviently to euphoria at first sight of the Rocky Mountains. The mountains are humbling. They remind us that our worries are insignificant. They rejuvenate the soul. They heal. Each time I listen to “Jar of Flies”, I am reminded of this.

Outside, a currier drops the day’s newspapers at the front door. I put down my mug and assemble the papers atop the cooler where they sit each morning.

“Thanks, man,” the manager says. “I appreciate the help.”

I take a seat at the high top table in the back and scan the paper, though I am hardly interested. A few locals soon join me. These are my coffee shop acquaintances. I rarely see them anywhere else. We never meet for dinner or drinks. We know each other only from the time we spend at the coffee shop.

“I like your Guinness hat,” I say to one. “Where did you get it?”

“In Dublin,” he says. “I have a good friend there. I’ll see if he can send you one.”

“Thanks, but don’t go to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble.”

The regulars at the coffee shop are not your typical random sampling. They are interesting people. Painters, entrepreneurs, athletes, trust fund kids, ski patrolman, mysterious wanderers, and millionaires.

A local club owner sits at a table nearby. Wearing sneakers, jeans and a tattered gray t-shirt, you might guess that he made his living in the construction trade. Last week, I’m told, he held a fundraiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton at his home on Red Mountain. At the table next to him another local flips through a thick novel. He is dressed in flip-flops, shorts and a fleece. In 2004, he climbed Mt. Everest.

Soon after 7 AM the line is backed up to the door. The manager leaves a message with one of his employees. “I’m not sure if you’re still asleep or on your way,” he says, “but you’re late and I could use some help.” He flips his phone closed and begins steaming milk.

The people waiting in line run the gamut; a road worker wearing a reflective vest, a mom with her child wrapped tightly in a stroller, several women in yoga attire, a high school student listening to his iPod, and a twenty-something, weary-eyed girl still dressed in the clothes she went out in the night before.

Youngsters often slip into the coffee shop on their way home from a hookup. They seem contemplative, as if trying to recount what actually happened in the dark, hazy hours of the early morning, but it could be that they are just trying to keep from puking. When I was in college, the morning stroll home after a random hookup was referred to as “the walk of shame.”

I remember author, Tom Wolfe, discussing the casualty of modern relations at Duke’s commencement ceremony in the spring of 2002. “These days it goes like this,” he said, and I am paraphrasing, “your eyes meet, your lips meet, your flesh meets, and the next day you get each other’s name.”

A bellman from the Little Nell walks up to the table to say hello to a friend. “You know the Beastie Boys are playing at Red Rocks this week,” he says.

“I’m going,” says a girl seated on the adjacent love seat. “It’s going to be amazing. They play at the Fillmore the night after Red Rocks.”

I tell them, proudly, that I am going to the show at the Fillmore.

“No way!” she says. “It was impossible to get tickets. They sold out immediately.”

“A college friend of mine somehow snagged two tickets.”

“I hear there’s a dress code.”

“It’s formal. You have to wear a suit or a dress.”

“That might be one of the coolest shows ever!”

A young looking guy takes the last available chair.

“Hey, Chris,” the guy next to me says. “Keith, have you ever met Chris Davenport?”

Chris is a World Champion extreme skier, and the only person to ever summit and ski all 52 of Colorado’s 14,000 foot peaks in a calendar year.

“No,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”

“Good to meet you, as well.”

It’s just after 7:45 AM and the coffee shop is packed. People conversing, debating, laughing. There is an older gentleman presenting his solution to Aspen’s traffic problem. The person listening nods as if the man is wasting his breath. Another guy says out loud that he is going to put his balls on the line, though I do not hear what it is that he is risking his balls for. The manager, still alone behind the counter, scrambles to keep the line moving.

While the trust fund kids, artists, and others living on their own time are able to linger, I have to get to work, though I do so in good spirits, having spent a morning appreciating the people that make Aspen a truly extraordinary place to live.

Entry Filed under: Aspen, People