Getting Roasted at the Coffee Roasting Company

Sometimes I work on my blog at the local coffee house.

They have free Internet access and the best coffee in town.

This is not your Starbucks or your Peets—this is one of the first coffee houses in California. It is the best place to peoplewatch, and now they’ve opened an adjacent cheese and wine café. What more could you ask for?

How about free spine-chilling entertainment—Sort of a performance art thing with you as one of the players?

This is how I like to look at what happened today while I was diligently working on my blog. Well O.K. I was also having coffee with a couple of my favorite friends. But at the moment the “entertainment” happened, I was busily writing, writing, writing.

I looked toward the doorway into the room that holds the actual coffee roaster and I saw a panicked looking coffee barista standing in the threshold. She mouthed something to the head barista behind the counter on the other side of the wall from the roaster. He ran into the roaster room and than sprinted out and past me. I was sitting near the front door to the coffee house and the doorway into the cheese and wine café. He ran into the café.

I looked into the roaster room and noticed a thick layer of smoke blanketing the ceiling. Then the head barista and another gentleman sprinted back past me and back into the roaster room again. I saw flames and then I heard the sound of a fire extinguisher. White vapor from the extinguishers billowed out from the roaster room. I still had my hands on my keyboard and I was still typing. Sort of like I do when I watch bad TV. The TV is just sort of background noise. It doesn’t interfere with my work; it’s just something to look up at every few minutes. I looked around the coffee house and everybody was doing the same thing. They were all typing on their keyboards. Some of them didn’t even notice there was a fire in the next room.

The fire extinguisher noise and billowing vapor went on for two or three minutes and then it stopped. Everyone had vacated the roaster room because of the smoke but most of the patrons were still sitting in the main room with me, hypnotized by their computers, typing away. What does this say about our society, people?

I thought to myself when the fire extinguisher noise ended that the fire was out. But I was just fooling myself. I knew that if the fire wasn’t still going in the roasting room that it might soon ignite again.

It was so surreal. We couldn’t take our hands off our keyboards.

Finally The owner of the Coffee Roasting Co. came out, and with the calmness of a flight attendant showing people to their seats, she told everyone—one table at a time—that the fire department had requested that everyone vacate the building, because there was a fire in the room next door. There was no screaming FIRE. She might as well have been saying “Would you like to purchase headsets for five dollars?”

Everyone slowly, and I mean slowly, packed up their laptops. Some people even carried them outside with the screen up to a nearby bench, sat down and kept typing, never taking their eyes off the screen. What does this say about our society, people?

I slung my computer bag over my shoulder, grabbed my coffee, walked down the street about half a block and watched as a fire truck and two police cruisers came to a screeching halt in front of the Roasting Company.

There is a bench area at the Coffee Roasting Company in front of the front windows for people to sit. This area was packed. There were so many patrons still outside the front doors of the coffee house that the firemen couldn’t get in. The police had to step in and scream at these people to move down the street.

Let me ask you, if you saw a fire truck screech to a halt in front of you, a fireman jump out with an ax or a hose, would you just stand there and sip coffee in his face? What does this say about our society, people?

On the bright side—no one panicked.
We left the building orderly—if not sedately.
People showed their ability to multitask.
We got a lot of work done.
We drank a lot of coffee therefore helping the sluggish economy.
We showed support for the local police and fire departments by giving them something to do.

Comments

[kate]

I don't quite know what to say, except that your world is different from mine. I think people here would react either by trying to help out or leaving or at least being totally fascinated with what was happening. We'd all be chatting among ourselves and certainly not typing away. That seems almost inhuman to me... but then I live in Saskatchewan, so maybe that's what happens in big cities.

Maybe not today though, with a blizzard going on. We might just jump into the roasting room to warm up. Brr...

[Kalyn]

Well I don't know what it says about our society, but I do think it's funny!

[Genie]

This totally cracked me up, Chigiy. I hope they get the fire cleaned up and reopen quickly. A coffee shop with non-chain coffee, a wine bar and a cheese bar? And free wireless Internet? That sounds just about like heaven to me.

[Jacqueline]

It ain't called "San Blah-zay" for nothin'! Not that we are IN San Jose, of course, but it does seem to be the prevailing attitude in the valley. Comfortably numb, anyone?

But still, what a great story!

[Annie in Austin]

So does your laptop have one of those little camera things so you could IM a photo of yourself not moving away from the roasting roaster?

I'm sorry for the proprietors but can't stop laughing at your story, Chigiy.

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

[chigiy Binell]

Kate,
I thought the whole experience was pretty strange even for Silicon Valley.

Kalyn,
It was funny. I think life is funny. But this was especially strange and funny.

Genie,
The coffee house is called the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company and it is the best coffee house I've ever been in. It's not icky and commercial. Thank goodness there was no serious damage and it opened up again right away.

Jacqueline,
These people, myself included, we definitely somewhere in "cyberspace" It was astounding.

Annie,
Damn, my laptop doesn't have any kind of camera. I wish it did. I could have recorded the whole freak show.

Don't worry about the proprietors. It was a chimney fire. The flue is damaged and the roasting room is a little messed up but it is business as usual.

[Amber Shaw]

I'm sorry I missed the excitement. If another chimney fire starts while I'm there I'll run up to the counter, make sure I get my coffee, then run out the door.