I am thinking of the cafés I stop at in every town I visit. The
employee-owned People's Cafe in San fracisco on Haight street, still
persuing the dreams of the sixties, protests happening in the park only
blocks away. The sassy baristas, tattooed and pierced at every café in
Portland, but the Black Cat most of all. Dark, good coffee and tables made
out of old video game consoles -- original Pac-Man and Space Invaders -- and
the service just a little surly.

Perkingruven in the university district in Seattle, drawing a perfect fern
leaf on every latté, and college students trawling in out of the green,
leafy rain.

Contintental coffee in Vancouver, with not one but two Starbucks-bland shops
on the same corner as competition, but the place had far better coffee and
walking down the street you could get pastries from the Italian bakery,
Spanakopita from the Greek one, sesame balls and crusty pastries full of
meat or red beans from the Chinese bakery to eat with a cup.