Boo!

A friendly face from Krankie's

The first coffee shop Halloween party is posted on the Events page. CoffeeCat's favorite holiday is just two weeks away!

Krankie's Airstream kicked off the season with its annual pumpkin carving event. The Airstream is next door to Reynolda Farmer's Market. Where else can parents kick back with a cold coffee beverage while the kids carve pumpkins in the sun?

Backstreet Buzz is planning its annual Halloween party. Last year, iCoffee hosted trick-or-treating. Some events might be on Saturday, some might be on Sunday, so we will post the details as soon as we find them.



Coffee shops, you can post your events here in the comments or on our Facebook page.

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

Discovering the coffee shop

I first discovered coffee shops when I moved to Winston-Salem in 1993. Suddenly, I learned that coffee wasn’t just for mornings. My sister, friends and I enjoyed poetry slams at the Horse’s Mouth in the heart of downtown and listened to up-and-coming bands at Morning Dew on Burke Street in the West End. Tate Street Coffee in Greensboro was an attraction where we took our out-of-town friends. In coffee houses we found the opposite of the smoke-filled, strobe-lighted, eardrum-bursting nightclubs that were “the” night life for college students. At the coffee house, everyone could get a grown-up yet non-alcoholic drink, stick to a tight budget, and hear the conversation.


More than a decade later, as a graduate student, I rediscovered coffee houses in the Triad. I appreciated calm but busy coffee houses like Café Roché in Winston-Salem and The Coffee Break in Greensboro. They provide a great place for coffee and reading by day, and conversation with friends by night. I’ve also discovered that coffee shops are much more than a place to gather for lattes and chai. New shops such as Krankie’s, Brew Nerds, and Chelsee’s, all in Winston-Salem, are putting a new spin on coffee shops and welcoming new concepts and new customers of all ages.

Winston-Salem’s Brew Nerds on Hanes Mall Blvd. is a glass, brightly-lit, ultra modern hot spot for Wii tournaments and trivia contests. The owners of Krankie’s transformed an old warehouse into an arts and entertainment destination where customers can watch documentary films, shop at a weekly farmers market, and visit nearby galleries and shops also housed in what they now call “The Wherehouse.” Krankie’s customers give it props as a good place to drink a glass of wine on Saturday night and read the newspaper over coffee on a Sunday morning. Some Saturday nights you can find gospel concerts at Juicy Java in Kernersville. iCoffee in Summerfield offers bluegrass music some nights and a gathering spot after Friday night football games.

The desire for good coffee and a place to enjoy it is universal. Coffee shops are great places to drink tea, smoothies, and even beer. And since people come to coffee shops for different reasons, you can be sure there’s a place and a time for any of them. To write your great novel, most coffee shops would be the perfect place on a Sunday morning or a Saturday afternoon. To meet new people, try Friday night art openings, concerts almost any night of the week, or Saturday mornings while walking your dog. To enjoy the literary arts, there are poetry slams, book signings, and scrabble tournaments.

In this blog, I’ll tell you about upcoming events at Triad coffee shops. Want me to visit your favorite coffee shop? Want to promote an event? Let me know about it.