Peet's Coffee & Tea

"What's wrong with this picture?"



http://www.peets.com/


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kFkFPxW-TU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9QZhLSKEps


There is actually nothing wrong with the above picture (please do not attempt to adjust your computer screen), the line is just from the Ahnold Schwarzenegger movie The Terminator (the first one). When Ahnold first arrives back in 1984 from 2029 ~ naked as a jaybird (because a jaybird in formal wear would be very unusual) ~ he is accosted by a group of Los Ångeles tough-guys (one of them played by a young Bill Paxton in one of his earliest film roles), and he asks them ever so nicely if he could have the loan of some of their apparel. The mean ol' street-punks demean and insult poor Ahnold and ask him if it was "Wash day, right?"; they learned that they should have been a little more polite to an out-of-towner looking for assistance.

Laundry Day + NFL Championship Games = no spare time, brother

I knew I wouldn't have time for both a nice breakfast out and time to do my laundry before the NFC Championship game started this morning (well, including the pre-game shmegegge*, which is normally hosted by a bunch of shmegegges), so I decide to go with the proverbial "Double avicide with a single lapis" and do my laundry and settle for breakfast of coffee and pastry at the Peet's® Coffee & Tea on Geary in the Richmond, which happens to be two doors down from a little laundromat. Normally for me, it's not really "breakfast" without an egg dish of some kind (French toast and pancakes count), potatoes (hash browns, home fries, or even French fries), and coffee or tea. I decided that one outta three ain't bad; this percentage is actually considered being a Superstar in Baseball terms.

As luck would have it (What is it called when luck doesn't have it? New England Patriots Football?), I still have two Peet's® gift cards, one from my birthday and another one from Christmas. (As well as one from St*rbucks, which I will only use when the good coffee ones are depleted ~ or maybe I will just donate it to some homeless guy, or would that seem too cruel?) These more than were sufficient to pay for my coffee and pastry. I even offered to pay for the coffee of the police officer in line behind me, but he said he had a gift card to use, too.

Peet's® Coffee & Tea has been a part of the Bay Area coffee scene since 1966. Peet's® was one of the first purveyors of fine, fresh-roasted coffees to be sold in its own stores (St*rbucks actually stole the idea from them; they just seemed to have perfected the whole franchosity idea). I can't say I am a genuine Peetnik, but I do enjoy their coffee and go there often.

Today's (non-decaf) brew being served was their Sumatra blend. This was a good blend, but I've had better from Peet's®. However, this one still beats 90% of the swill served by a lot of places (*cough-cough… McDonald's®… cough-cough*).

http://www.peets.com/shop/coffee_detail.asp?id=42&cid=1004

I also had a Cranberry-Walnut scone; it was just okay, nothing really special. It was a nice All-'merican combination of ingredients, though; both cranberries and walnuts are indigenous to the New World. I think that a Cranberry-Orange-Walnut scone would have been even better. It's not as if Peet's® bakes them fresh themselves, anyway.



That foofy looking jacket thingy on my cup of coffee is actually a pretty cool, reusable, cloth cup holder called a HipGrip™. It was a gift from friends several years ago (Thanks, Cindy and Greg!) that has seen a lot of good use. It saves on the waste from the normal paper/cardboard zarfs** that coffee shops give out now-a-days. I really don't know why more places don't sell these cloth holders.

http://www.thesatinbutton.com/hip-grip-coffee-sleeves-m-107.html

As for Peet's® coffee, I am sure that "I'll be baaack…" (well, of course I will; I still have over $10.00 left on the two gift cards).


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Peet's Sumatra Blend ~ 7.0; Cranberry-Walnut Scone ~ 6.4


*(Stupid cunning linguist pointless pointer of the day, part one:

"Shmegegge" as defined in The Joys Of Yiddish by Leo Rosten:

"Pronounced, always with disdain, shmeh-GEH-geh or shmeh-GEH-gee, to rhyme with "the mega" or "the Peggy". Ameridish slang. Origin: unknown; probably, a dazzling onomatopoetic child of the Lower East Side.

1. An unadvisable, petty person.
2. A maladroit, untalented type.
3. A sycophant, a shlepper, a whiner, a drip.
Also used to describe:
4. A lot of "hot air", "baloney", a cockamamy story. "Don't give me that shmegegge!"

I think of a shmegegge as a cross between a shlimazl and a shlemiel - or even between a nudnik and a nebech.
The word is popular in theatrical circles, conjuring up, by its very sound, vividly unlikable characteristics.
Miss Sophia Loren used the word with considerable brio in an interview with a New York Times reporter. The combination of great beauty, an Italian accent, an elegant shrug, a tone of derisive dismissal, and a Yinglish word marked a high point in the life of this colorful epithet.")

*(Stupid cunning linguist pointless pointer of the day, part the second:

"Zarf" is an Arabic word that means "container" or "sheath".

Also, this is a great word to remember when playing Scrabble™ and you are trying to get rid of that pesky "a" or "r" before the end of the game.)