The Untold Method appears on Medium; shop owner asks him to maybe also mention the hours are 7am to 6pm somewhere in the 4,000 words
Williamsburg Barista Writes 4,000-Word Essay on Why He Poured Your Coffee That Way
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — A barista at a specialty coffee establishment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, published Monday a 4,000-word essay on Medium titled “The Untold Method: Why Your Coffee Is a Decision, Not a Product,” in which he explains, with reference to fluid dynamics, phenomenology, and the agricultural practices of a specific Guatemalan cooperative, why he poured your flat white in the precise manner he did and why understanding this is “necessary context for full appreciation of the experience.”
For related London satire and commentary, see Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
The Essay
The essay, written by Marcus Elwood, 27, who has worked at Ground Intention Coffee on Bedford Avenue for fourteen months and has been described by his manager as “very committed,” opens with a 600-word introduction to what Elwood calls “the intentional pour,” which he distinguishes from “the functional pour” on the grounds that the former involves awareness of “the coffee’s communicative potential” while the latter treats the beverage as a “delivery mechanism for caffeine, which is a category error that impoverishes both the barista and the consumer.”
The essay proceeds through sections covering: the origin narrative of the specific beans (sections two and three); the philosophical tradition of craft as communication, with references to Martin Heidegger’s concept of “ready-to-hand” that Elwood acknowledges he is “interpreting liberally” (section four); the specific temperature management decisions made during the preparation of your particular coffee (section five, which includes a diagram); and a conclusion inviting the reader to “reconsider whether you have ever truly had a coffee before, in the full sense of the word.”
The essay has received 2,300 reads and 140 comments, of which approximately 80 are positive, 45 are in various registers of disagreement, and 15 are from people who visited the shop specifically to ask Elwood questions that he has answered by gesturing at the essay. The British have been producing Marcuses for as long as there have been things to have opinions about. The full inventory of British insults includes prat in its most affectionate application: the person who has elevated a modest competence into an elaborate theory of the self, who presents their specific choices as insights others have missed, and who is entirely sincere, which is both the most charming and most exasperating thing about them. Marcus is, in this taxonomy, a prat of the most affectionate category.
The Manager’s Response
Ground Intention Coffee owner Bethany Park described Elwood as “genuinely talented at his job and, I say this with affection, a complete handful.” She said she had read the essay twice and found it “remarkable” in a way she was not sure was a compliment. She noted that the essay had driven approximately forty additional visitors to the shop, most of whom ordered the flat white, which is generating positive reviews. “So commercially it’s working,” she said. “Whether it should work is a different question. I’m going to focus on the commercial part.” She asked through the essay’s Medium comments section whether Elwood might add a note about the shop’s hours, which are 7am to 6pm Monday through Saturday and 8am to 4pm Sunday. Elwood responded that he would “consider the appropriate placement of operational information within the essay’s thematic architecture.” The hours have not yet appeared. Customers who arrive after 6pm find the door locked and the essay still available online.
The coffee is excellent. The essay is 4,000 words. These facts coexist. British swear words and their social contexts and British slang including bird and related terms both offer the cultural framework for the specific tradition of applied enthusiasm that Marcus represents, a tradition that Britain has been producing in pubs, workshops, and allotments since before Heidegger was born, and that Brooklyn has adapted, with minimal adjustment, into its own native idiom. The flat white is available Tuesday through Saturday. The essay is always available. Heidegger, unavailable for comment, would almost certainly have had strong feelings about the temperature management diagram.
The Ground Intention Philosophy Expands
The essay has since expanded to 6,200 words, incorporating responses to the comment section, a new section on the ethics of customer education, and a revised temperature management diagram that Elwood says was misread in its original form and required clarification. The shop has added a small placard near the espresso machine that says, in Elwood’s handwriting: “Your beverage has a story. Ask me.” Customers who ask are directed to the Medium essay. Customers who have already read the essay are offered a free biscuit with their coffee, sourced from a bakery in Red Hook that Elwood describes as sharing the shop’s commitment to intentional production. The biscuit is excellent. It does not have an essay. Bethany Park says she would prefer it stayed that way. She is considering a policy.
The speciality coffee industry in New York has, over the past decade, developed a genre of communication that the essay represents at its finest: the long-form explanation of craft decisions addressed to a consumer who ordered a flat white and has somewhere to be. This genre is not unique to coffee. It appears in artisanal bread, in natural wine, in small-batch spirits, and in a specific category of New York restaurant that presents the provenance of each ingredient as an invitation to a relationship rather than a description of a meal. Whether the consumer wants this relationship varies. Whether the relationship is offered regardless also varies, in the direction of yes. Marcus Elwood is a specialist practitioner of this genre. Ground Intention Coffee is his vehicle. The flat white is his medium. The 6,200 words are, in every sense, his art.
For more satirical commentary, visit Private Eye.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/british-insults/