Definition of hipster
February 5, 2011 § 1 Comment
I can’t say my weekends normally include spending much time in the Tenderloin. That could be because, sitting in a café today, we were all distracted by the guy standing across the street in spandex shorts jacking off, but really that’s not what I’m here to post about. Today I went on the Tenderloin Coffee Crawl and was a “coffee tourist” for an hour or two. Wow, it’s exhausting work. My morning routine of boiling water and letting it seep in the French Press while I shower for approximately five minutes after my run seemed, well, embarrassing when confronted with the masses of San Francisco hipsters who own Chemex filters and use them to extract just the full body of coffee and who can talk for ages about letting coffee oils seep through and shine but not over extracting the grounds. Yes, it’s hard to compete, especially when there are a multitude of cafes who will do it for you.
But I did learn a thing or two about coffee on the crawl, which I think was the point for the non-coffee fanatics. And I mean, you really would have to be a fanatic, because I’m saying they are fanatics and I’m one of those annoying people to dine with who tops-out every meal with an espresso. First, we stopped at Farm: Table, the official organizer of the tour and arguably the first neighborhood small roasters shop in the area. As the brewing demonstration wouldn’t start for another twenty minutes, we enjoyed a free espresso and remarked that while it was refreshing to see sweet treats in the small sizes (the small sticky buns were especially adorable yet priced at $3.50), the prices didn’t seem to have dropped at all. Then we headed over to Little Bird, where De La Paz and Ritual Roasters were hosting a coffee tasting. I tried a little before getting distracted by the amusing hipster who walked down the line, aggressively slurping spoons of coffee and spitting them back into the cup one after another after another.
We might have skipped one or two stops along the way, but we ended the crawl at Hooker’s Sweet Treats, which was holding a 4-way coffee demonstration i.e. demonstrating how to brew Kenyan Kii coffee beans in four different ways — a ground through a B60 filter, a finer ground shaken over ice, a Chemex-filtered brew using a coarser ground to avoid clumping and finally, seeped in a French Press for three minutes. According to the Sightglass Coffee Roasters presenters, the bean in question really shines through the most through the third preparation process. After each demonstration, we passed the coffee around and filled our little espresso cups for tasting.
Though the crawl itself could have used a bit more organization and guidance from one place to the next (perhaps they could take cues from the Dublin Pub Crawl), I’d say it was a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon, off the beaten track in my own city.
Soufflé Days 
Wanted to go to this–all locations were within a couple blocks of me–but had a schedule conflict. Glad to get a chance to read about it instead!