Coffee news and notes

After two weeks away from Portland, I made it back down the gorge. It was sooooo nice to be welcomed back with 60-degree, cloudy weather all week. Okay, maybe that’s not true, but it was nice to get back to some good coffee shops. My favorite café in Dayton has closed, so I spent a couple weeks coffee-free, surviving (but barely).

In other news, school has started up again in most places, and hopefully, so will the regularity of these blog posts. Here are a few links for your Friday afternoon:

Better watch what’s in that coffee: a woman in Florida spiked her husband’s coffee with Xanax (a prescription drug used to treat anxiety) in an effort to “calm him down.” The local police disagreed with her account, charging her with attempted murder. link

Fortunately, we live in a very different era than 50 years ago, especially when thinking of coffee, advertising and the relationship between men and women. Someone put together a video called “Coffee Jerks,” with TV clips from the 1950s and 60s. It’s almost painful to watch.  link

High school students across Ontario, Canada, will have to sneak their caffeine into schools after the government banned coffee from being sold on campus. Toronto’s Globe and Mail (newspaper) is not too impressed with the ban. Student seem to be getting around the ban, however, as some are bringing coffee makers from home to plug in by their lockers. Really? link

Think that having a light rail line outside your door will help your coffee business? Some café owners in Minneapolis might disagree. link

Alec Baldwin complaining about a Starbucks barista with an attitude problem? The axiom “it takes one to know one” might be applicable here. link

If you only read the headline to this article, you might think to yourself “what happens when we run out of bags?” Not to worry, though. We can always re-use them…

Starbuckian K-cuppers will be able to get their fix at home starting in November. link

I’m going to leave out the link to the article for this one because I want to support local businesses, but when a coffee shop owner brags about having 30 flavors of syrup available, she ought to take coffee out of their business name…