Toronado

3rd wave coffee is cool. 

It has tasting notes, and nuance, and terroir. 
It lives on a short list of things in food/drink with so much complexity. 

Complexity requires someone to give a shit, and take notes, and convince others to give a shit as well.

This all happened for 3rd wave coffee
in San Francisco like 30 years ago. 

But 30 years isn’t enough time to develop culture. 
Or, at least, the last 30 years was the wrong time. The people who pioneered 3rd wave coffee did so in San Francisco, they sold to Nestle, and they got rich.

What was once cool, maybe, became cold indifference, quickly. The baristas are cold, the spaces are cold, everyone is looking at a screen,
and nobody cares. 

Third wave coffee is cool. 
It’s just not cool enough to treat me the way I used to get treated at Toronado. 

The first time I visited Toronado,
I felt like I was bothering them. 

Toronado is masculine, dark, and unapologetic. 
The music is loud and the whole place stinks of stale beer. The bar is also undeniably cool, the same way that skateboarding, playing guitar, and moshing are cool. 

Making beer is the sort of difficult, demanding, dirty job that makes you want to listen to metal music and get drunk. Toronado is a window into this reality. 

My first few visits to Toronado all felt the same. 
Cold service and great beer for an impossibly-low price. 

The bartenders at Toronado know everything there is to know about any of the 50-100 beers on tap at any time, they’re just reluctant to educate you. It’s service without a smile.

But when you get to know a place like this,
it softens up. I had some help. A dear friend I used to work with, Brian, grew up with one of Toronado’s bartenders, Justin. 

Knowing a bartender at Toronado turned it into a completely different experience. The doorman stopped asking for my ID and started opening the Dutch door for me. It all happened very quickly. I was in.

Since breaking through, I bring visiting friends to Toronado simply because I know that Toronado will recognize the occasion. If we order two beers, we might only get charged for one. If we paid for our first two, we’re definitely not paying for the third. And if we hang with Justin long enough,
he brings out the Underbergs and they’re always on the house. 

But this isn’t about free shit. My first time celebrating a birthday at Toronado, Justin served me a shot of Underburg in a long golden flute. The following year, Justin attended my birthday party and we all went to Toronado together. 

I don’t listen to much metal music and I overhear problematic shit across the bar at Toronado all the time, but these are my people now.
Some of them, at least. 

Beer has a culture and community that has developed and evolved over time. 
They gatekeep this culture, it’s a sensitive ecosystem. I had to earn it, I had some help, but I broke through.

This is what 3rd wave coffee is missing to me. 
I don’t know if it's the décor, or the rotating casts of baristas, or the absent owners, but it feels impossible to break though at these places. Or, there's nothing to break into.

And it’s ironic. Cafes are the original 3rd spaces — the first place you go when you don’t want to be at home. Hole in the Wall was my 3rd space for a long time. Then, Cafe du Soleil. Now, Mercury Cafe. All of which are notably, definitely, not a part of 3rd wave coffee. 

And there are exceptions.
Coffee Movement rocks, I love those guys. 
Grand Coffee too, I’ll stand in front of that place like the tank man if they ever try to close it down. 

But so many are the same. 
Sterile spaces with plenty of outlets. 
Rich sellouts who don’t want to work there anymore. And I don’t blame them.