Coffee in art

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Coffee. The first cup of it in the morning elevates it to nectar of the gods territory. Throughout the day it provides a pick-me-up and a drink to gossip over when on breaks. These are paintings of coffee, sometime just coffee in a cup, sometimes being savored.

Cigars, breakfast and coffee

The above video is an old cowboy sitting in a field in the late afternoon, smoking a cigar and telling stories about smoking cigars. His stories are entertaining: as an out-of-place, young, poorly trained, sort of a police officer in a small Alaskan village, as a ranch hand later, and just visiting a cigar lounge. Well worth your time.

His name is Dewayne and he runs a YouTube channel (and a school by the same name) called Dry Creek Wrangler School. Most of his videos involve horse handling or ranching, but he does branch out from time to time. Me being me, below are a couple of his food related videos. The first is breakfast over a campfire and the second is percolated coffee. Man, I haven't had percolated coffee in decades.

A talking cup of coffee

A cup of coffee instructs Jim on how to identify and cultivate prospects that he can sell insurance to. I guess the video proves that not only are there good cups of coffee, there are Eeeeevil ones as well.
 

The perfect cup of coffee

The above video is the Coffee Brewing Institute's 1961 panegyric to a cup of American style coffee. I haven't had a cup of peculated coffee for years and wouldn't mind having one to remember what they taste like. I was also interested in the vacuum brewed coffee. I've never heard of that method of brewing a cup of Joe. 

Via Open Culture. 
 

Coffee, taverns, doughboys and diners

How Coffee Changed America

Lumin Consulting has put together a nice infographic called How Coffee Changed America that shows a timeline of the major developments in the style and culture of drinking coffee in the United States. It's too large to post here, but if you follow the link you can see it.

One item I found interesting was that prior to WWI coffee was drank largely in coffee houses or taverns. Coffee houses of the era did not serve full meals, dining was reserved for restaurants. However, when the doughboys returned from the war they wanted to be able to eat meals as well as drink coffee in neighborhood shops. From that desire the iconic American diner was born.

In thinking about it, it is clear that diner's layouts are the same as most small taverns, with a counter instead of a bar and the back wall of liquor bottles replaced with coffee urns and the pass-through windows to the kitchen. The booths or tables for small parties are the same as taverns, although more windows and lighting have been added.

Below, and after the jump are some pictures of diner interiors. I had never thought about it before, but from the similarity is seems obvious that they just reused the floor plan of taverns when they created the new style of coffee houses.

(How Coffee Changed America hat tip: Andrea Smart)