the perfect pour

Stopped by the Trident the day before last after a late breakfast with an old friend at Lucile's just down the road.

I love what I do now, but I've never loved working so much as when I worked at the Trident when I was a student, supporting my two double-latte habit a day with subsidized coffee drinks, and doling out one of the few legal substances that made its way into Boulder's sewage run off.

Started up by three Buddhists from Berkeley before good coffee was easy to come by in Boulder, the Trident used to be almost the *only* place where you could get real coffee in town. And although good coffee is now much easier to come by under the Flatirons I'd still recommend that you go out of your way for a cup of the Trident's coffee at the far West end of the Pearl Street Mall the next time you're there -- a recommendation based in part on sentiment but mostly on knowing how much coffee matters in that place.

To become a barista at the Trident it was expected that you would first bus tables -- for a year. This was your apprenticeship.

Some kind of conference took place behind closed doors before the invitation was issued to train at the piston-driven Rancilio (no pre-programmed push button nonsense at the Trident -- this was a real machine that required timing, temperament, and a musical sense of tempo to operate) and then M.S. (who's still with the Trident and whom it was good to see again yesterday when I stopped by to pay my respects) whose true business title I don't think I ever knew (and don't know now) but who I think of as "the Elder" (not that he's old. just that he knows. so much.) -- M.S. would pull you aside and let you know that it was time.

And then your training would begin.

There were conversations about the correct color and texture of the coffee's crema as it poured like honey through the grip; about the right grind and how the burrs would sometimes have to be adjusted when the weather changed because humidity in the air impacted the pour. There were conversations about tamping, frothing and ratios of espresso to milk.

In the summertime there were careful machinations to create an iced coffee that was strong enough to hold up as the ice melted down, and intensely labor-intensive iced espresso drinks in which we lovingly layered a strata of chilled espresso over a base of cold milk.

I loved the art required to work there, and the speed needed to serve the line that snaked out the door. And I loved that the management we worked for respected that art and asked us to own it.

I also remember with respect and reverence the best bitch slap I ever received on the job. I was late by about ten minutes for my shift -- I had been late before and had as good an excuse now as I had then, but M.S. had had enough of it.

He pointed out that I was late, I started in with my excuses, and he interrupted me, saying: "No. Don't be late again."

I wasn't.

When I was going through my divorce and unsure of my place in the world, I came *this close* to calling him up to see if I might spend a few weeks at the Trident, working the machine, making coffee for the folks, flowing from one order, one act of creation, one delivered request to the next.

I sensed then that maybe it could right my world, make sense out of things again -- the way making gifts by hand does, the way giving can fill you up whole.