Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded
Our closest neighborhood cafe, and the place we’ve been buying our household beans, Zoka, has officially jumped the shark. The store was mentioned in Friday’s edition of McPaper (USA Today) as one of the “10 great places to get jazzed about great java.”
Great. It was hard enough to get a seat there before. Now, since I live 3 blocks away, should I worry that my sidewalk will be thronged with caffeine pilgrims with disposable cameras making a flashbulb shock-and-awe, breaking off pieces of my retaining wall and pulling up my crocuses for souvenirs? Is there money to be made if I set up a portable espresso stand and sell shots to people waiting in line to get in Zoka’s door?
Um, probably not. I don’t know how many people in Seattle not staying in hotels read USA Today. I only know about the article because a friend in Wisconsin emailed and asked if I knew about Zoka. It’s more likely that their marketing person hit a home run with the article placement. The article’s source for the feature linked to a site called coffeereview.com, a place where an addict like me might waste a lot of time. We’ll have to see what the long-term effect of the article will be. If the baristas start wearing sunglasses at night, setting up websites of their own and signing their cups for money, we might have to walk an extra block and patronize the other hundred or so cafes within walking distance.
