“Among the numerous luxuries of the table…coffee may be considered as one of the most valuable. It excites cheerfulness without intoxication; and the pleasing flow of spirits which it occasions…is never followed by sadness, languor or debility.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“I stop drinking coffee, I stop doing the standing and the walking, and the words-putting-into-sentence doing.”
-Lorelai Gilmore, "Gilmore Girls"
I can picture it now, Benjamin Franklin with his perfectly curled hipster hair, glasses down on the end of his nose, writing the date of his next journal entry in beautiful calligraphy, after having woken at 5 a.m. to start his daily routine, sipping his dark roasted black as night coffee.
Listening to a lecture on Benjamin Franklin’s writings, sipping my cup of pumpkin spice Keurig coffee that I made in a rush to get to class, my professor wakes up my half asleep, not-fully-caffeinated brain by stating that coffee shops were sprouted in Europe and America around the time that Benjamin Franklin was inventing and writing. This is when people began to grab a coffee and sit in a community.
According to I Need Coffee, coffeehouses appeared in the Middle East way before they had ever appeared in Europe. When coffee did make its way to Europe, it was controversial, and the Pope had to approve whether the drink would be allowed to the public or not. Of course, he became a coffee addict (just like all of us), and the drink was allowed to be served to the public according to NCA.
The very first coffee shops in America were called “Penny Universities” because a cup of coffee only cost a penny. Today, we’re so hooked that we’re willing to pay four dollars for a pumpkin spice latte, not even paying attention to how the prices continue to rise at Starbucks. Similar to today, these coffee shops were used for meetings and catching up with colleagues. There’s something pleasing to the knowledge that just as I sit around a coffee shop with my friends and discuss blogs that we’ve read and Netflix series we’re addicted to, that our forefathers may have also sat with coffee cups in hand, laughing and writing and discussing literature.
So don’t feel guilty purchasing your five dollar dirty chai with two shots and extra whipped cream; really you’re just joining a part of history.
