« The Morning After | Main | For the Chicago congress: CNU XII »
Friday, April 30, 2004
Coffee House Redux II - 04.30.04
Geez, how did I forget this one in my list of coffee houses? The Montague Book Mill has been one of my favorite stops for years.
When I first went there, the bookstore was a Western Mass, hippie-political bookstore (remember Alice's Restaurant?), with cheap books of all kinds and sections for esoteric groups like left-handed, Guatamalan, Lesbian Marxists. They've mellowed over the years, but they still have cheap books and a great building next to noisy waterfall that sounds absolutely wonderful. And they still have an honor-system cafe with good coffee and carbos.
You can take your coffee out to a stone-terrace with plenty of sun next to the waterfall. I've found good architecture books there, along with a few of Jim Kunstler's early novels. And I love the area – check out the Bookmill's local resources guide.
April 30, 2004 in Books, Food and Drink, Travel, Urbanism | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341bff5053ef00d8345f31e269e2
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Coffee House Redux II - 04.30.04:
» Book Soup from Veritas et Venustas
A GOOD BOOKSTORE is a great thing. It's a center of civilzation and a community center, one of the prime examples of Ray Oldenburg's Third Good Places. A bookstore's an indication of local culture. When I was at Harvard, there were three all-night book... [Read More]
Tracked on Oct 22, 2006 10:08:41 PM
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Athens, GA is the consummate college town that has had a fondess for outstanding coffee houses and music clubs (sometimes in the same place) for about a decade. Starbucks didn't discover the town until at least 4 or 5 independents had opened up in the thriving downtown and the smaller, but ever popular Five Points shopping district, just down the street from my house.
My unabashed favorite in downtown is Blue Sky Coffee (http://www.athensworld.com/coffee.html for photos) which has a delightful artsy interior and plenty of outdoor seating on College Square. This affords ample people watching over coffee or a variant, plus the croissants and cheesecake provide the carbs.
Five Points hosts at least 2 (one is a wine, coffee, dessert bar that opened recently, Aromas) and Jittery Joe's gets the stars for rustic ambiance, with book-lined shelves and a "library" type atmosphere, served up in an old converted gas station.
When you get to neighborhood bars, I have a few of those to add, too.
Posted by: Lucy Rowland at Apr 30, 2004 11:05:08 AM
I'm pretty sure I've been to Blue Sky, maybe with you.
Athens is probably the best Southern college town I've been to. It's what I expected Oxford to be. But it turns out Yoknapatawpha* (I even know how to pronounce it), is much better than the real thing.
*Yoknapatawpha County is William Faulkner's fictional name for Oxford and its surroundings. See http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/faulkner.html
Posted by: John Massengale at Apr 30, 2004 11:54:16 PM
My favorites, in no particular order:
+ The Grand Cafe, Farmington Hills, MI
+ The Bourgeois Pig, Chicago, IL
+ The Drowsy Parrot, Saline, MI
+ Cafe Felix, Ann Arbor, MI
+ The Coffee Bean, Plymouth, MI
Posted by: Dawn at May 17, 2004 6:45:34 PM
