Trouble Coffee

Outer Sunset, San Francisco

Photographed - June 16, 2016, 11:51 am - 1:08pm

Legendary toast, an unforgettable demitasse, and the dawn of parklets.

*Murky rich crema in such fine ceramic it’s seared into my memory. And, my first (only?) encounter with fancy cinnamon-sugar toast.*

*Name me another place you can get this mighty trio and enjoy it among driftwood and cacti.*

We all have those moments and memories that are particularly seared in, that you can recall in vivid detail. I was just discussing this in a yet-to-be-published video (among all my vast multitude of yet-to-be-published videos) where I talked about the images from my lifetime of photography that most jump out in my mind. Mostly those are from the-one-that-got-away type photos, but that is not so in this case. I actually made this image.

*This wildly hand formed, mishapen ceramic demitasse lives rent-free in my mind.*

And it’s not so much the photo itself that I remember, but these wild little demitasse I had espresso in. You’ll see two different ones among the images, so either I had multiple shots of espresso in this one sitting, or one of my companions got a shot later and was kind enough to let me shoot it. The undulating form is carved out by the shaft of sunlight cutting through the shadows, drawing great attention to its uneven form. I didn’t know when visiting SF that I would come away with so many fond memories of ceramics, but I ended up visiting many locations of very fine pottery.

One of them was just next door, General Store, where they gave me shit about having a “professional camera,” which was the first time I’d encountered that rebuke. I’m still salty about it eight years later. I’m still a professional photographer if I get out my iPhone. Jesus it’s making my blood boil right now at 9pm on a Monday.

Let’s move on before I get so upset I can’t sleep tonight.

*Indulgent texas toast with melted butter and cinnamon sugar. Damn, I could go for some right now.*

My friends who brought me out here surely did so because of the toast, which was highly novel at the time. I’d never been to a place where cinnamon-toast was the highlight of the menu, and I don’t think I ever have since. It was awesome, and I didn’t know until right now, as I did a little research, that it was so culturally significant. They’re cited as the first place to popularize fancy artesianal toast, which has grown to broad appeal by now.

*A beachy scene of driftwood to enjoy your spro and toast. I wish I’d taken a better photo of it than this.*

Another Trouble Coffee original that I didn’t throughly appreciate at the time was this little parklet they had out front. It was made with a downed eucalyptus trunk and an abundance of donated driftwood speckled with cacti and succulents. I just thought it was a cool beachy vibe and a place I was trilled to visit and spend an hour sipping coffee. Turns out, according to the owner, that it was the first ‘true parklet’ in SF. I imagine by ‘true’ she meant as an extension of the coffee shop, as opposed to the ‘tiny park’ art installations from a few years prior.

It felt like something that just sort of happened unnoticed, and that may well have been how it went. Outer Sunset, even then, felt distinctly like the outskirts, like some kinda lawless beach town where the rules were lax and it was ruled by surfer and skaters. Maybe it’s still like that, but it had that distinct vibe back then, which made it an incedible place to visit. It’s like the city just petered out into this little beach town before ending in dunes and ocean waves.