Teething Problems

Since when did buying a coffee change the world?

A Young Man by L.S. Lowry (1955)

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Frequent any Millennial-run haunt and you risk a diabetic coma—not from sugar, but from sentiment.

You’ve been here a thousand times, if once. Exposed brick. Austere hanging lamps. Chalked slogans daubed on the wall: Our coffee is for everyone.

Welcome to Filter or Brew or Caffeinate. The name is always a verb, much like the leaflets and posters demanding action on this and to resist that and fight the other. The design budget—lavished on antique typewriters and distressed wood—has done its work. The counter is an art installation of scaffolding poles and planks. The menu, bleached of pound signs, offers a smorgasbord of caffeinated virtue.

Behind it stands an earnest man in his late thirties, dressed like a dockworker who has never seen a dock. His beard glistens faintly with jojoba oil. In an affected American accent, he asks: What can I get you?

You hesitate. Is it large here? Or grande? God forbid they insist on venti.

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The walls ache with twee. Be the change you wish to see. A Banksy print—yes, it is that tragic—hangs prominently: a homeless man with a sign reading ‘I want change.’ Helpfully, a nearby observer explains the double meaning buried in the word ‘change.’

Until this morning, you—a jaded, mid-thirties Millennial—straddled the philosophical fence. Now, you know for sure: homelessness isn’t much fun. Another print, that naked Vietnamese girl running from horror. But now there’s Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald beside her. The premise: War destroys innocence. Well, I never. If only a stencil graffito tackled the moral gordian knots of our time—incest, say, or cannibalism—so that we’d finally know when to tut and when to applaud.

Filter is no mere coffee shop. That marriage of espresso and milk is no mere cortado. Filter wants to change the world, one ethically sourced bean at a time. The website promises to eradicate ailments common to man since Plato. One might have thought a café’s mission was to buy coffee and sell it at a profit. Not so. Between frothing milk, they are dismantling heteronormative patriarchal dominance. Or something.

The barista eyes your floppy mane of hair with suspicion. Such hair, in this setting, suggests you either vote Tory or think Nigel Farage is a bit of a chap. Good lord. You probably pour out a grappa for Mussolini’s birthday.

There is, admittedly, a certain charm to this madrassa of homogenised authenticity. One feels reassured knowing that every thought in the room is shared, circulated, and pre-approved. Nothing jars or surprises.

Eavesdropping confirms it. You could pause and rewind every conversation. The content of which meets this week’s community standards. A strange impulse rises in me—to shout something unforgivable:

Borders need control! Michel Foucault was a boring, depraved charlatan!

But it would land upon waxed ears. They have all the thoughts they need.

These thoughts are communal and accepted without thought. Limits are bad. Expression is good—provided it conforms to the accepted limits. Graffiti is profound. Tories are fascists. Coffee is activism. And so on.

You could lift each slogan on the wall from your deranged aunt’s Facebook page. It is here, curiously, that the aphorism comes to die, but not before drenching itself in kerosene, calling its ex girlfriend, and striking a match.

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On the community board, posters advertise a fresh production of Romeo and Juliet.

Perhaps the director scrubs the ending clean. The doomed lovers, after all, were persons who committed suicide. This audience, I’d imagine, would prefer Romeo and Juliet to purchase a VW Camper and document their #vanlife journey lest their tragic fate kill the vibes.

Across the din, a voice rises above the tapping of screens: “Obviously, it’s about the power disparity.”

What isn’t? I wonder aloud. What on earth isn’t? Haven’t you read that bloody lunatic, Foucault? Everything is power—except, evidently—the ability to think for oneself.

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