Coffee is still King

Before I begin, just wanted to wish all my readers a happy holiday season. I know it’s been awhile since my last post, but hopefully in the New Year, posts should pick up.

 Speaking of pick-ups, coffee (or specifically the abundance of coffee shops) is a strange thing to me. After getting a coffee urge this morning, I began to think about why we’ve become so obsessed about it.  Now maybe I’m a little late with my complaints and grievances about it, but seriously, I’m not sure why it’s been such a huge part of not just our mornings – but our day.

Maybe it’s just one of those 90’s trends that is here to stay (cue in Central Perk), but as a kid growing up in Park Slope (and now as an adult), I’ve seen the explosion of coffee shops in the neighborhood grow from one (which was really just a bakery), to approximately over 10-15 in the ‘hood today. And that’s not including the two (yes, only two!) Starbucks that sprouted up.

 Now I wasn’t born yesterday – I get why people like coffee. It’s easy to buy, it’s got massive amounts of caffeine in it, and generally cafés are a great place to hold meetings or hang out. But does anyone really like the taste of roasted seeds (yes, they’re really just seeds) brewed with hot water? Personally, I think without a little bit of milk and sugar, coffee would be one of the worst, bile, non-flavorful drinks in the world.

 So what’s our obsession with it? Are we willing to look past the taste for hot flavored water that will energize us in this 24-hour economy? Do we really like the taste of coffee (I know some do)? Is it addicting? (Yes).

 Funnily enough, right after I decided to rant about coffee today, I found out that The Wall Street Journal published a story citing some of the health benefits of the drink.

“An analysis in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people who drink three to four cups of java a day are 25% less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who drink fewer than two cups,” WSJ reports. “And a study presented at an American Association for Cancer Research meeting found that men who drink at least six cups a day have a 60% lower risk of developing advanced prostate cancer than those who didn't drink any.”

Wow, only six cups a day? No wonder coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world. Wonder what’s #1?

Oil.

Something to think about next time you buy that chai latté.

Thoughts? Do you actually like coffee? Feel free to leave a comment. If I get enough, I’ll publish some counterpoints.

Lady Gaga, no silly, GoCaGa!

Every once in awhile, I get a huge laugh out of some truly funny sales and marketing tactics that I see thrown around, especially in New York.

For a little background about me, I went to college a little less than a year after 9/11. I ventured upstate to Syracuse University, moving away from the city I've always called home and loved. It was probably one of the best things I've ever did for myself.

But as it turned out, in the four years I went to school (from 2002 through 2006), a transformation had occurred here in New York. Fueled by Wall Street, a national housing boom, and Sex and the City, NYC became the place to live if you were in your 20s and 30s and looking to sip lattes in a gentrified coffee shop with "the nouveau youth" (yes, you could call them... hipsters).

By 2006 when I graduated college, I earned a well-to-do job and decided it was time to finally enter the NYC housing market. Boy did I have sticker shock. I settled on renting in Park Slope, a place I was familiar with, after looking at the 2006 hot-spot neighborhood of the year, Astoria.

The least expensive apartment I was able to find in the Slope was a one bedroom (which we converted to a two bedroom with a curtain and some makeshift accommodations), in a building that maybe a decade years earlier was an abandoned crack house. Our landlord was so cheap, he refused to turn the hallway lights on during the day (yes, that cheap despite our premium rent).

We were probably paying double what the place was worth, but how could we not? It was the peak of the boom, and heck, if you didn't have your checkbook out, someone else did. Yes, even on an abandoned old crack house on a questionable Park Slope block.

It's that market hysteria of "sign now, worry latter" that gave Brooklyn abandoned half-built buildings, and perhaps the funniest marketing connotation of them all: new neighborhood names.

Priced out of Williamsburg? Try "East Williamsburg!" Can't find a place in Park Slope? Try "SunSlope!" Want to live near the potential superfund site, the Gowanus Canal? Call it "GoCaGa!"

This all makes me laugh, albeit in a sad way because in reality these names are total bullshit. I hate to be "the typical native" but I cringe a little when a newbie to NYC tells me they've found this great place in SunSlope or GoCaGa. While the name may sound cool, you've been totally owned and most likely ripped off.

Although it may be hard for me to reach all the new residents of this great city, please beware -- next time a broker tries to tell you to meet them at this fantastic new apartment in BoCoCa for $2900 a month plus four months of deposit, tell them you've got a bridge to sell 'em.