World Peace at your local coffee shop?

NASA photo uploaded from about.com

A coffee shop is its neighborhood.

To be successful, a coffee shop has to have something in common with its neighbors, something that attracts them to come in, come back, and spend money. My neighborhood doesn't have a locally- owned coffee shop, so I enjoy trying out other people's neighborhoods.

For example, I enjoy The Coffee Break, Tate Street, and Coffeeology, all located in the UNC-G neighborhood. All of these appeal to students, professors, and the professionals who live in the surrounding neighborhoods. Even so, each shop has a different look & different energy.

iCoffee in Summerfield is in the neighborhood of Lake Brandt, so it appeals to people on their way to the lake. It's also a hub for the Northern Guilford community and reaches out to the students and families through student art displays, concerts, and gatherings for sports teams.

Sitting on the patio of Krankie's in Winston-Salem, I noticed that the county detention center and one building of the Piedmont Triad Research Park rise over the old industrial city block on which Krankie's is situated. What kind of neighborhood is made up of a jail, a biomedical research building, railroad tracks, and a coffee shop in an old warehouse?

Spend some time listening to the poets and musicians who perform at Krankie's, and you'll feel the neighborhood. It's the neighborhood of innovation, energy, and creativity. It's a crossroads of artistic, scientific, and ordinary people. Some poets rhyme about life on the streets and how it landed them in that jail across Chestnut Street. They're using their energy and creativity to innovate new, better lives for themselves, and they're not afraid to get on stage and let people know.

Other poets rhyme about diseases and human conditions that are being confronted head-on at the research park. While scientists in those labs develop new, life-saving drugs and grow human organs to replace diseased organs, a poet named Eurycide White shouts a poem called, "**** you, cancer."  The disease took people she loved, and across the street, strangers are taking on disease. Does it get any more real than this?

Coffee shops don't rate the same coverage on front pages and newscasts as health care reform, Middle Eastern peace talks, or the war in Afghanistan. You and I know that. But real life is happening in and around Triad Coffee Shops. Take some time to explore your neighborhood coffee shop, or someone else's. You never know - you just might be within arm's reach of world peace or a cure for cancer.

UPDATE: See Life in Forsyth's wonderful photo