Harper-Thames Decodes the Taxonomy of East London’s Most Dense Concentration of Coffee Establishments
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
By Harper-Thames | Shoreditch, East London | prat.uk/author/harper-thames/
The Coffee Shop as Social Text
Shoreditch has more independent coffee shops per square mile than any neighbourhood I have been able to identify through the unscientific method of walking through them and counting. The coffee is, across these establishments, generally excellent. The variation is not primarily in the coffee quality but in the specific type of experience that each establishment is offering alongside the coffee, which reveals something about who is in it and what they are doing there. Let me offer a taxonomy.
Type One: The Specialty Roaster. Has its own beans, sourced directly from specific farms in Ethiopia or Colombia or Guatemala, with tasting notes that read like wine descriptions applied to coffee, which is either pretentious or genuinely informative depending on whether you can taste the difference. The person inside is either someone who works in coffee and can taste the difference, or someone who wants to be associated with the seriousness of someone who works in coffee. The coffee is excellent regardless of the customer’s motivation for ordering it. Type Two: The Laptop Default. Clean surfaces, reliable wifi password posted visibly, plug sockets at every table, music at a volume specifically calibrated not to intrude on conversations or concentration. The person inside has a MacBook and a Notion workspace and has scheduled three hours of “deep work” and will spend thirty of those minutes watching the coffee being made. Type Three: The Community Anchor. Has been there since before the gentrification arrived, knows the regulars by name, serves coffee that is good without being exceptional, has a notice board with local events, costs less than the specialty roaster by approximately forty percent. The person inside is either a local who has been coming for ten years or a visitor who has specifically sought out this type and feels virtuous for finding it. All three types are currently open. All three are full. Happy Mother’s Day, Shoreditch coffee culture. You are a study in contemporary urban life.
More at https://thedailymash.co.uk
London continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. The city’s ability to contain multitudes — the ancient and the brand-new, the absurdly expensive and the surprisingly accessible, the deeply traditional and the constantly self-reinventing — is what makes it inexhaustible as a subject. Every week produces new material: new events, new controversies, new moments of unexpected beauty or institutional comedy. The writers at The London Prat are paying attention to all of it, and this column attempts to add one small North London — or Central London, or Shoreditch, or tourist-facing — perspective to the larger conversation about what this city is and what it is becoming. The conversation is ongoing. London is always becoming. This is either its great charm or its great exhaustion, depending on the week and the weather and whether the tube is running. Happy reading, and do come back next week.
London continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. The city’s ability to contain multitudes — the ancient and the brand-new, the absurdly expensive and the surprisingly accessible, the deeply traditional and the constantly self-reinventing — is what makes it inexhaustible as a subject. Every week produces new material: new events, new controversies, new moments of unexpected beauty or institutional comedy. The writers at The London Prat are paying attention to all of it, and this column attempts to add one small North London — or Central London, or Shoreditch, or tourist-facing — perspective to the larger conversation about what this city is and what it is becoming. The conversation is ongoing. London is always becoming. This is either its great charm or its great exhaustion, depending on the week and the weather and whether the tube is running. Happy reading, and do come back next week.
London continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. The city’s ability to contain multitudes — the ancient and the brand-new, the absurdly expensive and the surprisingly accessible, the deeply traditional and the constantly self-reinventing — is what makes it inexhaustible as a subject. Every week produces new material: new events, new controversies, new moments of unexpected beauty or institutional comedy. The writers at The London Prat are paying attention to all of it, and this column attempts to add one small North London — or Central London, or Shoreditch, or tourist-facing — perspective to the larger conversation about what this city is and what it is becoming. The conversation is ongoing. London is always becoming. This is either its great charm or its great exhaustion, depending on the week and the weather and whether the tube is running. Happy reading, and do come back next week.
London continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. The city’s ability to contain multitudes — the ancient and the brand-new, the absurdly expensive and the surprisingly accessible, the deeply traditional and the constantly self-reinventing — is what makes it inexhaustible as a subject. Every week produces new material: new events, new controversies, new moments of unexpected beauty or institutional comedy. The writers at The London Prat are paying attention to all of it, and this column attempts to add one small North London — or Central London, or Shoreditch, or tourist-facing — perspective to the larger conversation about what this city is and what it is becoming. The conversation is ongoing. London is always becoming. This is either its great charm or its great exhaustion, depending on the week and the weather and whether the tube is running. Happy reading, and do come back next week.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
