My Coffee Education: From Madman to Marzocco
I fell in love with coffee at Madman Espresso on 35th Street. This was back when I was young enough to order mochas in the morning without shame, when iced coffees in summer felt revolutionary, when the ritual of going somewhere for caffeine was still new and exciting.
Blue Bottle: Before and After
Then I moved to San Francisco and discovered Blue Bottle when it was still a hole-in-the-wall independent spot with legitimately the best coffee I'd ever tasted. There was something about being proud of Oakland, about finding this place that felt like a secret, about the way they treated coffee like it mattered.
Years later, I re-fell in love with Blue Bottle at their Rockefeller Center location—one of the busiest in the country, the complete opposite of that original Oakland intimacy. But I became such good friends with the baristas there that I'd go multiple times a day. When I was interviewing job candidates, my calendar would show "coffee meetings" where I'd buy them Blue Bottle and try to figure out if they'd fit on our team.
The Rockefeller location taught me something about coffee culture at scale. Even in a tourist-heavy, fast-paced environment, when you show up enough, when you learn people's names, when you become part of the daily rhythm, you can create pockets of genuine connection.
The Marzocco Signal
Eventually I fell in love with third-wave coffee more broadly, and I developed a reliable heuristic: if I walked into a new place and saw a La Marzocco machine, I knew I could get something reliable and interesting.
The Marzocco became my quality signal—not because the machine makes the coffee good by itself, but because places that invest in a $15,000+ espresso machine usually care about everything else too. They care about bean sourcing, grind consistency, extraction technique, milk steaming. They probably train their baristas properly. They probably change their menu seasonally.
It's like seeing a well-maintained vintage motorcycle or a properly sharpened knife—it suggests a level of attention and investment that usually carries through to the final product.
Coffee as Creative Fuel
I am a big fan of espresso as part of a well-rounded diet, including drafts/spliff-and-espresso]]. But beyond the caffeine, coffee shops became my external brain. Different locations for different kinds of work: the counter at Blue Bottle for quick email responses, the back corner at Madman for longer writing sessions, the communal table somewhere new when I needed to think differently.
The best coffee places understand they're selling more than drinks—they're selling atmosphere, routine, and the social infrastructure that makes creative work possible. The coffee is the entry fee, but the real product is the space to think.
What I Learned
Your taste evolves, but the ritual stays important. The first mocha at Madman was probably objectively terrible coffee, but it was perfect for who I was then. The single-origin pour-over I'll order now serves a different function but fills the same need—a pause, a small luxury, a way to mark time and transition between different kinds of thinking.
Good coffee shops are community infrastructure disguised as retail. The best ones know this and lean into it. They become third places, daily anchors, spots where regulars develop genuine relationships with staff and each other.
And sometimes the equipment really does matter. When you see a Marzocco, you're not just seeing a machine—you're seeing a signal that someone cares enough to do things right.