Our bike route to NW takes us along NE Broadway down a short hill to the Broadway Bridge, across the Willamette into NW, then down the Lovejoy ramp.   Traffic and lights usually make it stop-and-go.  On the last 2 early Sundays, however, we experienced clear skies, no traffic and no stops, making this portion of the ride exhilarating.   Having enjoyed Barista Pearl two weeks ago, today’s five chanced pushing our luck, revisiting this ride in order to visit the relatively new Barista NW, and revelled in another dry, liberating ride.

We found this NW outlet to be well appointed with great lighting, seating options, and wall art, especially compared to the original spare Pearl shop.  At the same time, it lacked some “personality” features when compared to the Alberta and Pearl shops.

It was probably our appreciation of the unique lighting fixtures here that led to a string of free flowing topics, among them: the You Tube video that teaches how to retrofit canned flourescent lighting to LED; there’s a DIY non-cable television channel that airs You Tube type how-to-do-it videos; what does it say about our bike/coffeeshop group that only one of today’s five has cable, and there the daughters pay for the service; that cable viewing is waning primarily due to the younger generation finding new ways to access entertainment; via the site firstrow.eu, one can access sporting events from around the world; D. told us about the documentary The Queen of Versailles he streamed, about the downfall of a narcissistic family building an over-the-top Versailles-like mansion, then later told us about the Wolf of Wall Street movie (focusing on an over-the-top greedy character,) and American Hustle; and the Jennifer Lawrence-Joan Rivers spat.  Speechless after the last topic, we decided to ride off into the sunrise.    827 NW 23rd     http://www.baristapdx.com