Barista Wins Regional Award For Conveying Maximum Existential Urgency In Under Thirty Seconds
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Harlem Coffee Shop Introduces Menu Item Called The New Yorker Which Is Just A Black Coffee Served With Visible Impatience
NEW YORK — A Harlem coffee shop called Grounds for Complaint has introduced a menu item titled “The New Yorker” that consists of a 12-ounce drip coffee, black, no additions, served by whichever barista is working in a manner that conveys, through facial expression, body language, and the specific quality of the cup’s placement on the counter, that the barista has approximately forty-seven other things to do and that the customer’s presence, while commercially necessary, is not the organizing priority of the barista’s morning.
The item costs 3.50 dollars, which is 1.50 dollars less than the shop’s standard drip coffee, which is called “The Regular” and comes with the usual service. The New Yorker’s discount reflects, owner Denise Abara-Washington explained, the reduced labor cost of the abbreviated service interaction.
“The New Yorker takes seventeen seconds to make and deliver,” Abara-Washington told reporters Wednesday. “The Regular takes forty-three seconds because there is a greeting, an inquiry about additions, and a closing pleasantry. We pass the efficiency savings to the customer. Also, some of our customers specifically want the impatience. They find it authentic.”
Head barista Jerome Whitfield-Okafor, who won the Brooklyn-Queens-Harlem Regional Barista Expression Competition last year in the “atmospheric communication” category, is, by several customer accounts, the most effective practitioner of The New Yorker’s service style. Customers describe his delivery as containing “a complete emotional narrative in the placement of the cup” and “the specific quality of acknowledgment that communicates you have been seen but that being seen is not the point.”
The Customer Base
The New Yorker has, since its introduction six weeks ago, become Grounds for Complaint’s second most popular item after the standard latte. Abara-Washington reports that approximately 40 percent of her morning rush customers now order The New Yorker. The demographic breakdown of New Yorker customers, by her observation, skews toward: longtime Harlem residents who describe the service style as “how coffee used to be served before everyone got feelings about it”; transplants who describe ordering it as “practicing being a real New Yorker”; and what she describes as “people who are in a hurry and appreciate that Jerome is also in a hurry.”
Several customers who order The New Yorker regularly told reporters Wednesday that they valued the transaction’s efficiency and the specific social contract it encoded, which one customer described as “mutual acknowledgment that we are both adults who do not require emotional scaffolding to complete a coffee purchase.” Another said she ordered it because “Jerome’s impatience makes me feel like I am in a movie about New York, which is the best feeling available on a Tuesday morning.”
This kind of service style that is marketed as a discount but functions as an experience is consistent with a long tradition in New York service culture of economy and directness being reframed as authenticity, with the authenticity becoming its own form of premium product.
The Competition
Several other Harlem coffee shops have, since Grounds for Complaint’s announcement of The New Yorker, begun developing competing items. A shop on 125th Street is reportedly developing “The Commuter,” which is a drip coffee delivered through a window without any indoor interaction. A shop near Columbia is developing “The Academic,” which is a drip coffee served with a reading recommendation that the barista selects based on a rapid assessment of the customer’s appearance and does not explain further.
None of these items has yet launched. Jerome Whitfield-Okafor, told about the competition, said he was “not concerned” and that “impatience is a craft and not everyone has it.” He then attended to the next customer in line.
The Whitfield-Okafor Method
Whitfield-Okafor, when asked to describe his approach to The New Yorker’s service style, was initially reluctant to theorize about it. Under some prompting, he described it as “presence without invitation.” He explained that most service interactions involve a performed warmth that is “transactional rather than genuine” and that The New Yorker’s model was “honest about the transaction without being hostile about it.”
“You come in,” he said. “You need coffee. I make coffee. I give it to you. This exchange is complete and real. I do not need to perform enthusiasm about it. You do not need me to perform enthusiasm. The coffee is good. That is the whole thing.”
He placed a cup on the counter with the specific quality of placement that several reviewers have described. The reporter picked it up. It was, in fact, very good coffee.
This is consistent with a wider observation about service culture in which the elimination of performed warmth can produce a more genuine transaction than the performed warmth it replaces.
For more on New York coffee culture, see The Daily Mash for related British coffee shop service style coverage.
Grounds for Complaint opens at six a.m. Jerome starts at six. The New Yorker is ready when you are.
The Borough Recognition Movement
Vitelli-Marchetti’s letter has, since being shared on local Staten Island community boards, attracted enough attention to prompt discussion of a broader “Staten Island Recognition Initiative.” Several residents have expressed interest in a coordinated campaign, which one organizer described as “not a secession movement, because we have considered secession and the ferry ride is actually fine, but a visibility campaign.” The initiative would include: a social media effort using the tag BoroFive, a proposal to rename the Staten Island Ferry the “Fifth Borough Express” to emphasize the destination, and a petition requesting that New York City’s official tourism materials feature at least one photograph taken in Staten Island per year. Bohiney.com covered the emerging movement Wednesday with the attention it deserves. The London Prat’s coverage of regional identity politics provides a useful comparative framework for understanding what is happening here, which is a place asserting its right to be known, through the mechanisms available to a place that is mostly not known. The Staten Island Ferry departs every thirty minutes. The ride is beautiful. Manhattan is visible from it, which is, Vitelli-Marchetti notes, “a courtesy we extend that has not been reciprocated.”
SOURCE: https://sites.google.com/view/world-satire/united-kingdom-and-satire