There’s a lot to be said for high-quality coffee. Coffee snobs the world over will rejoice when a blend’s notes and textures seamlessly create a beautiful work of art; they are just as quick to criticize a drink when it fails to meet their exacting standards. I won’t generally hesitate to admit that sometimes, I am one of those people. While I’m a shameless Starbucks fiend at heart (I have enough stars to be a gold member through the end of 2018), I think that crappy diner coffee is just as important a culinary staple as fair-trade, organically grown, fertilized by unicorns artisan coffee. These distant siblings serve very similar and yet somehow overwhelmingly different purposes. One may taste like the tears of angels and one may taste like the tears of a coffee bean, but I love them both deeply.

The fact is, good coffee doesn’t cut it at 2am when you’re sitting on a cracked vinyl diner seat with a plate of soggy whole wheat toast and some pancakes in front of you and all of your friends surrounding you. Good coffee has no place in cross-country road trips and it certainly has no place in tiny gas stations with bars on the door and a flickering, slightly ominous-looking neon “Open” sign in the door, staffed only by a kindly old man with a hunchback and probably throat cancer from years of chain smoking, whose hands are barely dexterous enough to hand you the change after you pay for your crappy coffee and slightly stale danish. Good coffee has no place in the halls of hospitals or the basements of churches or the early mornings of volunteer experiences.

Quality coffee is a challenge. It challenges you to experience your drink, not just drink it. It challenges you to treat your coffee as a puzzle- how do these notes fit together? How does this coffee experience fit together? But crappy coffee- oh, what a stark contrast. Crappy coffee is comfortable. Crappy coffee is familiar. The acrid, harsh burn of crappy coffee is a security blanket. Crappy coffee does not push you. Crappy coffee just reminds you of that spontaneous road trip you took with your best friends. Crappy coffee reminds you of going to your favorite local 24-hour diner after closing night of whatever theatrical production with the entire cast and staying there until the birds start chirping. Crappy coffee reminds you of times you wouldn’t trade for the world, no matter how tired or drained you were at the time. Good coffee is a great thing to analyze, to pick apart and dissect until the coffee is no longer whole. But crappy coffee? Crappy coffee is whole. Crappy coffee makes you feel whole.