Starting in 2011, our extended group of up-to-eight bicyclists have gathered most Sundays at 8:00 a.m. in central NE, for rides that end up at a coffee or tea shop. Here we’d spend 45+ minutes hanging out and checking in. To date we’ve visited 163 different shops, most locally owned, throughout the City.  Since we aren’t coffee aficionados – H always drinks tea and E just has water – we saw our blog as reporting not on a shop’s coffee quality but on our hanging out experience: what are the pro and con elements in each shop that assists or hurts our hanging out experience.

We provide this background because until our visit to this Heart shop, our focus primarily has been on our physical and visual comforts, those elements in a shop that made us comfortable and seemed to stimulate our discussions.  But at Heart their pricing posed a barrier to our staying longer: $3.50 for a cup of tea served in a 6 oz. pot, house coffee for $3.00 with refills costing $2.00; and most pastries $4.00 or more.  No doubt we’ve paid similar prices for certain items elsewhere, but here, altogether they provided a roadblock.   Visually we appreciated the shop’s craftsmanship and window space; it echoes the positive design elements we’ve seen in other newly constructed commercial spaces.  Still, we probably left earlier than usual due to our resistance to paying $5.00 for 2 coffees and continually refilling the tiny teapot.

Discussion topics this morning seemed to center on weather, fire and water: the two of us with close relatives who survived the Santa Rosa fires this summer, compared notes on their/our experiences; someone noted that CA cities are back in drought conditions even after a heavier than average rainfall last year; G reported that a common friend is changing his South Africa itinerary later in Feb. due to Capetown being in dire shape in terms of its water supply; and E recommended our reading the Cadillac Wars, which encapsulates the West’s misguided historic/present water policies and practices.

5181 SE Woodstock                            heartroasters.com