Variety Coffee - Williamsburg

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City

Variety coffee Williamsburg circa January 2016

In the mid-saturation days of 3rd (4th?) wave coffee’s expansion into Brooklyn, I was set with the task of cataloging them. I visited the best the city had to offer at the time, as well as some of the place it just… had to offer. The images I have in this set are certainly from different time periods. The busted green counter above clearly belies the early days when the first opened the shop, but look at the next shot and you can see it is clearly post-renovation.

The same coffee display one year later in January 2017

I regret that I don’t have more photos from the first trip in 2016 to reflect back. I assume I felt there wasn’t much to see then, or that maybe it was unsightly. Having grown a lot in how I appreciate the look of a place even when it is defunct, I’ll bet I would enjoy seeing it now. But what I do have are some shots from the following year where the place had undergone some renovations, and could then be shown off a neighborhood jewel worth drawing people to the area.

The front section of the shop included the marble tables that became a staple of their shops’ design. This location developed some character while the roastery in Bushwick took it even further.

The rear half of the dining room had a different, more woody look and put the focus more on providing ample seating than aesthetics.

I enjoyed Variety and often would stop in for an espresso if I was in the area and had the craving, but this location never really sang to me. If I were intentionally ‘going out for coffee’, I’d either be looking to try something new, or going to one of my main haunts, which would have been Devocion in Williamsburg or AP Cafe in Bushwick. I did go to the Bushwick branch of Variety with a bit more frequency, as that was both closer to home and a lot more beautiful of a place.

This location is distinctly a small outpost. Great for those in the neighborhood, surely, but for me not much of a destination.

We’ll finish up with a set of espresso images as I hunted around for a composition I was happy with.

First stop for my espresso was this little ledge on the coffee display, clearly meant to house a product like a box of beans. This was more of a joke that I’m sure Daniel encouraged and I shot anyway, because it’s important to have fun. After this was the shot above on the coffee display, which was also a little silly.

Next I paired the crema laden demitasse with a box of the coffee for context. Useful, sure, but not a very pleasant composition with your eye fighting over which to look at.

In the top left corner of that last image I see what I believe is my brother Dustin, which brings me back to this time. Dustin, our best friend Daniel, and I would roam around to the coffee houses I was photographing and often just got a single espresso to split between the three of us. This is because we were going straight from one to the other and if we were each having a full espresso at each stop, we would have all been having a very bad day. But this way we each got to taste what the shops had to offer, broadening our palates and knowledge. I look back on it fondly.

Isolating the coffee helps our eye focus, without the distracting reds and differing heights of objects. The crack in the counter draws a line right through the cup, further directing the eye to the cup. Dustin and Daniel’s legs don’t excatly help, but they do add a human element to the image that could otherwise seem lonely and empty, so maybe they are a good addition.

Another frame from inside is the best in the set at showing off the gorgeous crema in this espresso shot. Other elements of the image aren’t stellar (spoon placement, that one rivet on the top right), but the actual coffee in the cup looks amazing. Centering the cup in the camera and setting the spoon over on the counter, maybe with a little espresso clinging to it, would have been a great move.

My next stop after making a few shots inside was to take the coffee outside and see if I could find a nice composition in the daylight. In this case I found a planter to perch the cup on. You can see we’d already enjoyed a few sips by now. The shot is decent, but far from spectacular. The spoon is a distraction. Shoulda got a shot of one of my mates stirring the espresso, now that I know that’s the thing to do (Thanks James Hoffman).

Photographs by Nicholas Doyle, 2016-2017
Shot for Nooklyn Neighborhood Guides