Background

BACKGROUND.  This is the blog/website of a group of NE Portland recreational bicyclists who have visited a slew – 213 and counting – of independently owned coffee shops over the past nine years.  Typically  half of our destinations are to new or recently remodeled shops, and half are revisits; in 2019 we visited 23 new or recently remodeled shops.

WHO ARE WE??  A loose group of nine  semi-regular recreational bicyclists, who depart from Wilshire Park (in NE) Sunday mornings at 8; all are between the ages of 45 and 73, all are male, a slight plurality of whom are coffee drinkers.  BUT MOST IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO KNOW IS THAT FOR US, THE ELEMENTS THAT MAKE HANGING OUT A REWARDING EXPERIENCE – AN ESTABLISHMENT’S PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS – ARE PRIMARY, MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE QUALITY OF A SHOP’S COFFEE OR ITS PASTRIES.  Again, it is the elements that improve our hanging out experience that we focus on in the blog.

WHY COFFEE SHOPS AND BAKERIES??  In addition to tasty drinks and pastries, shops have come to serve their neighborhoods as community meeting centers, while at the same time reflecting their owners’ individual aesthetic interests. Weekly we feel exhilarated by discovering new destinations, and more of this special city.

WHY RATE OUR FAVORITES??  With at least one of our group being anal and all others being analytic, we wanted to have a record of our Sunday travels, and this morphed into wanting to share what we found.

RATINGS??  Rationally, we understood that drink and pastry quality, plus a shop’s physical and social environment, all contribute to our experience. But so does the availability of bike parking, and a variety of other factors.

We initially tried using quantitative ratings.  But then the “aha” light bulb reminded us that our experiences with most shops consist solely of what happened on one particular Sunday morning roughly between 8:45 and 9 a.m.   Moreover, our universe is restricted solely to shops that are open by 8:30 a.m. on Sundays.  Thus we felt more comfortable conveying general impressions rather coming up with a formal rating system.

WHAT READERS CAN DO TO HELP??  Provide feedback on your general and/or specific reactions, and give us leads on good shops that we have yet to visit.