Da Vinci
I listened to a TED talk recently about inspiration and where ideas come from. Apparently the advent of coffee houses had a lot to do with the Industrial Revolution.
See, good ideas come from coffee.
I listened to a TED talk recently about inspiration and where ideas come from. Apparently the advent of coffee houses had a lot to do with the Industrial Revolution.
See, good ideas come from coffee.
I don’t fully accept the TED argument; after all “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” is one of the classical fallacies. I suspect what we see is more that the spread of coffee houses was a consequence of social changes associated with the population shifts caused by industrialization.
I am one who believes that there are many grey areas… and that change comes around as a result of a variety of factors coming together… But I find it fascinating that coffee has spurred great thought…. and great ideas…. and great advancements in our world. Its contribution cannot be denied…. it is a force for good! Although, I’m guessing forces of evil use coffee, too.
I used to hang out at a coffee house here in Santa Cruz called Cafe Purgolesi ( I believe that’s the right spelling!). I used to write lyrics for a band that I was in at the time. Yeah, I guess that coffee houses do stimulate creativity.
squid… I used to hang out at “The Perg” too! Big Victorian house with lots of places to plunk down and go through the books ya just bought at Logo’s. Haven’t been there in a while, though.
I miss coffee houses that have reading, writing, or drawing areas. Places that aren’t so driven to make money that they chase you out if you aren’t buying more than a cup or two when you are sitting and reading or drawing or what have you.
When I lived in Oregon I used to hang out at Sherri’s restaurant all the time because they had great coffee and they didn’t mind you hanging out there all day. I would go there on a Sunday morning with a book or two and just hang out and drink coffee and read till late in the evening. If I had some extra cash I would get a meal too before going home.
It was really nice.
When you go to a cafe in Paris, the waiter pretty much grants you that table for as long as you like providing you order something. They don’t hover and I like that. Some people think that it’s poor service… but no, they are just giving you time at you table.
We used to have a coffee house in Portland (Maine) that had folk song circles…. I miss the Portland Folk Club. 🙁
In my RPGs set in the 17th – 19th centuries I will often have intrigue scenes happen at either a coffee house or a chocolate house. (I had one game that involved smuggling tulip bulbs… big business in 1637*…. 😛 )
The Auld Grump
* Eventually collapsed the Dutch economy… seriously.
If nothing else, coffee and tea gave them something to drink besides beer or wine (the water wasn’t safe to drink). People going to work neither half drunk nor hung over; OF COURSE things improved.
AG,
I feel the need to qualify your footnote. What devastated the Dutch economy wasn’t the tulip bulb business but the collapse of the unregulated speculative bubble that grew up around it.
Beetles… kinda sounds like economies of today… don’t it?