On the bus this morning I noticed that the Gaff, Holloway Road’s premier metal pub (yeah, I said it Big Red!) has been turned into a Costa Coffee. From a den for people who wear long black shorts in winter with chains on them, and t-shirts that say things like Cannibal Corpse Gang Bang, to a Blueberry Muffin and Skinny Latte café is quite a jump. It got me thinking, do we really need that many coffee houses?

I counted at least 9 ‘Branded’ coffee shops, and countless other cafes on my way to work, and that is not including Pret or Eat. It seems as a society, it has been collectively decided without me, that our sole aim is to pump some sort of caffeine into our faces and to hell with the consequences.

Now don’t get me wrong, I need a coffee in the morning, and one around 3-ish as a pick me up, but I don’t live in a perpetual state of caffeine addiction. I don’t Jones for it like some Heroine addict, but I do need at least a cup a day or I get a bit of a headache. (that makes you an addict you mug I hear you cry).

What I don’t do is crawl the streets, desperate for free Wi-fi that no one can actually connect to or some over priced hot beverage. I think about the amount they charge for what is ostensibly hot water, milk, and some sugar beggars belief. Yet people can’t get enough. What would happen if they didn’t get their Starbucks Skinny Caramel Macchiato double shot hold the sugar? You could probably buy all the ingredients for the above coffee abomination for the price of a Grande one, and then have a regular supply of it for the rest of the year.

I blame Friends! They peddled this idea that friends would regularly gather in a coffee shop to discuss their lives. That to do that over a pint, a drink like that, was so 80s. What we needed now was coffee, it had ties to New York, and wise cracking beautiful people. That is who we all wanted to be with their floppy hair, sarcasm and Calvin Klein waistcoats.  I imagine Middle America hated their ubiquity. Our going to Café Nero nowadays helps us deal with the idea that Friends ended, but only for the baton to be passed to us. You see people chatting over coffee, when they normally would have done it over the phone or at one another's house. You see people hunched over their laptops, struggling to get online, playing Angry Birds on their phones, and wondering why they are sat in what is a shop window. They are probably wearing a large beanie too! 

We used to be a nation of tea drinkers. We liked tea. I used to drink loads of it, sweet and strong, as an Indian that is how tea should be. But that too has changed. We cling to the nostalgia of tea, that nothing is more sacred to us, but recent stats show that we are switching allegiance. Sure there has been also a rise in hippy teas, like Green Tea, Jasmine tea and words like Anti-oxidants, but it is an inevitable slide from our history.  I remember hearing an old Lady once say,

‘It is horrible, all these chains opening up, killing the highstreet. In my day we had lovely Lyons Tea Rooms, those were the days.’

I wanted to tap her on the shoulder and say, ‘And what do you think Lyons was if not a brand?’

But that would have been cruel. To shatter someone who is elderly’s world view is not how I roll.

Caffeine is highly addictive though. I had a friend of mine, who although not coffee or tea, drank probably 2-3 litres of Diet Coke a day.

THAT IS RIDICULOUS

I am surprised he wasn’t dead from Aspartamine poisoning. He has now cut down, and replaced it with carbonated water, but the 12 odd years of that level of consumption cannot be good for him.

Anyway, I think we have too many, and maybe we could close them and open something different, like my Angrydome idea....which I will elaborate at some later point. 

 - Anand