Chapter 22: The Coffee Shop Wars of 2002-2007

I am back from the hiatus. Let's rock!

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In early fall 2002 the second issue of the ESG featured a cover story on the sneak opening of the Raven Coffeehouse. It would not officially open for another 2 months or so but this was the culmination of about 10 years of renovations. The Raven itself is deserving of an epic and that will come in time.

Meanwhile, another shop just a half mile or so north on Military street was brewing (pun intended) for about 5 years. The Bean and Brew was off Military and on Quay street. It was a smaller place than the Raven but pretty much tried to do the same thing as the Raven. It opened a little under a year after the Raven in the latter part of 2003. In my observations it started off slow and only tapered off from there.

To compare the two using X-Men references, if the Raven was Juggernaut then the Bean and Brew was surely a crippled Morlock fighting the flu.

I was at the Raven quite a bit during the first year and a half of its operation. And since I've always been about revitalizing downtown Port Huron I gave the Bean and Brew a go a few times. Never once did I really like being there in a non-live music environment. Barring any problems I had with its proprietor I cannot 100% pin down why I did not like the place. But that is for another entry.

Then in early 2004 an internet cafe opened up. I never went there mainly because by the time it opened I was deep into the newspaper and any free time for such fun went on at the Raven.

So by mid-2004 there were 3 coffeehouses competing with each other.

Before the internet cafe opened I was seriously considering starting a betting pool as to how long the Bean and Brew would last. The relatively few times I even went in there I probably accounted for 33-50% of the customers there. The atmosphere wasn't too inviting and the coffee...well...wasn't exactly brewed. It was powder quickly mixed with hot water. And it was never that good of coffee either. I affectionately dubbed it the "Powder and Moisturize" thereafter and achieved a modicum of fame for it.

Probably the best thing to come out of the internet cafe was the press release that was done by someone at the Times Herald who has probably never had a cup of coffee in their lives (how you can work on a newspaper and be downing 10 pots of it a day is beyond me though). The press release, to the best of my memory, stated that you could go into the internet cafe and quench your thirst with an espresso. It doesn't take a genius to know that coffee doesn't qualify as a thirst quencher and a concentrated version of it doesn't do much better either.

The Powder and Moisturize though was something. It was just a room that had the barest minimum of lighting but a lot of seating that was ALWAYS available. I'm glad that I never did start that betting pool though as I know I would have lost a lot of money because it was an awful lot like David Spade; we try hard to make sure it stops but for some reason stays around.

The internet cafe was closed by 2005. The Bean and Brew had its final toll last year. It closed down for a little while under the pretense that it would reopen, as I understand it, as a jazz club.

Now you can walk by the former location of it and see that it is for sale or rent.

The Raven though has proven popular enough that it will (if it hasn't already) serve some alcohol.

How did it all come to this?

Stay tuned.