King Coffee Roastery

JWise Moments

Happy couple Nicky and Randy at King Coffee Roastery in Phoenix, Arizona

When the quality of life means nothing in the face of economic pressures to perform in the quest for greater and greater profits, the luxuries as perceived by those comfortable with a service will have to suffer as their favorite places of business give way to the corporatized franchises that pander to a banal population looking for conformity over something unique and different.

Ethan Cook at King Coffee Roastery in Phoenix, Arizona

Sure, tastes and attitudes change, but the sad disappearance of those places where friendships develop between customers and staff grows more and more common, or maybe I’m waxing nostalgic for something I’m imagining as I am failing to find those new mom & pop shops as I become fixated on the places I habitually return to.

As I take time to write this post in the closing days of the life of King Coffee Roastery on Union Hills Road in Phoenix, Arizona, I look fondly upon the relationships I’ve made with customers such as Nicki and Randy in the top photo, and I appreciate Mike, the owner of the shop, who gave people like Cross-Eyed Ethan an opportunity to overcome his sight handicap as he nearly always missed pouring various liquids into the cups they belonged but no one could say he wasn’t entertaining in some seriously strange way.

Dakotah Mein (barista) and Natasha Peralta (barista) at King Coffee Roastery in Phoenix, Arizona

The situation here a week ago was that the shop was going to close, and that was that. In the intervening days, a buyer happened upon the scene and while King Coffee in this location will cease to exist, something new will be taking its place. As far as the regulars are concerned, I’m sure that many of them will continue to frequent the shop as, obviously, it must have been convenient for them, aside from having a product they enjoyed. And maybe some faces will remain familiar as a couple of current employees might be able to stay on, such as Dakotah and Natasha.

Sadly, or maybe fortunately, Caroline and I will be traveling on King’s final day, so there will be no sad goodbyes, and now that we have learned about the transfer of ownership, there may not be much change of much at all regarding the idea of a coffee shop still operates in this space. Monday after our return could be an interesting moment when I meet the new owner and start finding out if the culture of my current favorite coffee shop will mostly remain the same or evolve. Mind you, evolution, in my view, is a good thing, while extinction is just bad news.

Caroline Wise at King Coffee Roastery in Phoenix, Arizona

After all the years of me coming to King, most often in solo mode, Caroline joined me in order to try a waffle that she had been admiring last week prior to our trip down to Ajo and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. While I visit King to not only gab with other regulars but to try and get some writing in, Caroline enjoys the slow coffee at home on weekends, the quiet to read and knit, while somewhere in there, she carves out the time to call family in Germany so this is one of the rare days she hangs out with me at the coffee shop.

Each time I order a coffee here, I earn a King Coffee loyalty point; the count had grown to over 300 when the imminent closing of the store was first announced. Today, I’m down to about 150, and it’s unlikely I’ll be able to cash them all in. When I started amassing points, I was reluctant to trade 9 points for a free 10th cup because I wanted to support the operation. On occasion, I’d throw another customer a free drink, typically a student, someone who could use the free gift. While I’d prefer to just let the points drift into the universe, Mike, the owner, encouraged me and others who’d done the same to use them before they closed up shop or changed ownership.

Roaster Mike at King Coffee Roastery in Phoenix, Arizona

Meet Master Roaster Mike, the Boss. Over the years, as I’ve relied on Mike to act as my version of the bartender therapist, he’s indulged me patiently by listening to the stories I was bent on sharing with him that likely rarely made sense and simply distracted him from getting work done. Sure, I did my best to ignore his gestures and silent pleas for me to wrap things up, but anyone who’s known me understands that I’m pretty adept at ignoring social cues and am able to continue going on for many minutes, never returning to the point of my discussion before I’ve totally lost the person. What I’m most amazed about regarding Mike’s resilience was that he’d often appear almost interested, and this could be after he’s already powered through what looked to me like a solid dozen shots of coffee and maybe a couple of espressos. How he himself didn’t blabber on, overwhelming my conversation is beyond my comprehension, or is this truly my superpower where I’m able to ignore all that might compete with me to tell me their story?

So, what was special about King Coffee Roastery that other coffee shops are missing? Well, my answer is going to go full-corn: it was love. Oh my god John, seriously, you are going for that cliche? Sure, many people visiting an independent coffee shop will say it’s that they aren’t corporate, or the coffee has a distinctive taste, or whatever. For me, hot, bitter caffeinated liquid in a paper cup and some wifi might be some generic lifeblood, but what other places are missing is the evolving flow of love that moves through places where, for a time, synchronicity opens a space in the continuum, and the people who move in and out of the front door are carrying something that lends a special air to the environment. Life in these places isn’t simply transactional; it is life-affirming, and I’ll be sad that this one has to give way to financial motives that have no room for love.

Val and Larry Watkins of Phoenix, Arizona

Speaking of love, I’ll close this post with a photo of Val and Larry Watkins with whom I’ve shared many a conversation over the years. This happy couple of more than 31 years, while not daily regulars, drop in at least a few times a week. Hopefully, if not here in a new incarnation of King Coffee, we’ll all continue to meet somewhere nearby in the following days and weeks.

A Note Regarding the Mundane

JWise Moments, Photo of the Day

Palo Verde tree in bloom Phoenix, Arizona

It’s allergy season, tax season, the approach of summer, and the space between those things and our travels. It’s easy to write about a trip somewhere as there’s a kind of excitement of going places, but what of these days when routine happens on a regular basis? Every day, we head out early in the morning, typically before 6:00 a.m., for a walk, and we suffer from the allergens that fill the air at this time of year. Every day, I think about doing the taxes, but I have until the 18th, so there is time. The air-conditioning is now on every day as temperatures have consistently been in the mid-90s here in Phoenix. It’ll likely stay this way, only much hotter, for the next four and a half months. Nearly every day, I find myself at a coffee shop at one point or other, typically first thing after dropping Caroline at her office.

I finished working out a two-week meal plan as we focus on the older things in our pantry and freezer that need to be eaten instead of thrown away; rarely do we ever throw food away. Writing about the once-a-week ritual of washing clothes is definitely of no interest for a blog post, but that kind of mundane thing is part of the mundane human maintenance usually glossed over. Gas is supposedly more expensive, and I guess it is, but that seems inconsequential in the scheme of things, considering I’m paying $45 a gallon for iced soy lattes at Starbucks in the afternoon on top of the $37-a-gallon Americanos I drink in the morning. But these details are just boring, maybe even hackneyed.

If I’m adequately busy and productive during the day, I’ll “reward” myself with mindless entertainment in the evening. This is either had by reading or trying to find something of some minor value on YouTube; the latter is typically a failure, with me plumbing the depths of stupidity and probably contributing to the rot accumulating somewhere in my brain that will show itself the older I get.

This quick burst of the mundane already needs to come to an end as here at 5:00 p.m.; it’s about time to go pick up Caroline and deal with the traffic of getting home. Our dinner of crockpot beans is finished, so there’s no real culinary excitement going on there unless you are a bean aficionado like we are, in which case we are dining on Lina Sisco’s Bird Egg beans cooked long and slow with bacon and onion. So, maybe not everything is exactly mundane today.

That Was Then This Is Not

JWise Moments

Driftwood Coffee in Phoenix

Go places or don’t, read or write, dream or die. The routine, sad to admit, is only mixed up when I opt for a different coffee shop, I’m in a different book, or I demand I do something I’ve been neglecting, such as writing a blog entry after a long break. Feeling like it’s been a long time is not the same as really having been a long time. I checked and saw that I posted a list of things just six days ago, but that was a list, not a blog, in the sense that I want to interpret it. Though this is easy enough to contradict even before I even make my point, as the blog post should share something personal to me, is that really possible? You see, the last post about our diet is certainly something personal, and among some subset of people who live in Phoenix, Arizona, and enjoy food diversity, it is maybe nothing out of the ordinary and then, on the other hand, the majority of Americans would consider us culinary freaks.

This last statement is based on empirical evidence gathered while observing my immediate vicinity when, in one tiny slice of time, I find myself in a situation in which I am in the minority, ethnically speaking. Of course, this is easily proven by taking myself to a “major” supermarket where I find myself in a sea of similarity.

Coffee shops are like seas of similarity, too. As I focus my photos on my isolated work setup, there are the obligatory tattooed baristas, man-bun-wearing big bearded hipsters, a homeless person, two people talking shit about the friend they each talk shit about the other with, the random man in a suit (I’m in Arizona where people don’t wear suits), four to seven computers open for work each with their white illuminated Apple logo, and someone like me (an arrogant wanna-be writer looking in disdain upon these empty souls trying to find a viable way to spend part of the day that would otherwise be empty and devoid of meaning).

Black Rock Coffee in Phoenix

And then the next day, I do it all over again, except now I’m further along in the book I’m reading, or maybe I’m editing the embarrassing piece of writing while I’m leery of sharing the same old thing I’ve lamented about 45 other times or maybe it’s 55. I am not sure because I don’t track my worn-out threads because admitting with precision how repetitive I might be could derail my efforts to fill a space so few eyeballs will ever discover.

Is it ironic that this act of attempting to blog is a disruption to reading The Age of Disruption? Well, maybe not if you consider that I’m also reading Radical Animism by Jemma Deer (it’s on-screen), and if I consider that my blog post is a kind of object in nature, then these words take on an animism; so maybe taking a page from her book to tell some story or other is in line with adding to the realm of our earth.

Should you, at this point in this pointless entry, be wondering what this has to do with the title of That Was Then This Is Not? Well, the beginning of this post about whatever I was writing then is not where I’m at now, so maybe you follow that what I wanted to say was I don’t really have anything at all to say.

The Plum In the Golden Vase

JWise Moments

The Plum In The Golden Vase

Back in April, I was posting about a book titled The Plum In The Golden Vase and how we’d just started volume 4 of the 850,000-word mega-book. At the rate we’d been reading it, I figured we had until 2025 before we’d finish it; well, I was wrong. Tonight, we closed volume 5 and put to rest its myriad of characters that had lived with us for ten years. It was never our intention to stretch a title out for such a lengthy period of time, but now that it has happened, I think our fondness and familiarity with the story will have us grieving its end.

I believe that the reason we picked up steam was that volume 4 ushered in the demise of our central character while volume 5 took down those corrupt minions that lived off the excesses that were exemplified in the previous chapters of the 100 chapters this book covered.

So, the main takeaway from reading such a long work over many years is that I believe everyone should pick something of this extraordinary length and read it slowly enough that it lives with them for years. Sure, we get attached to characters in much shorter works, but to live with those featured on so many pages year after year, they grow over time in our memories and, in some way, become family.

While we’ll be jumping into The Water Margin, a.k.a. Outlaws of the Marsh, soon, we’ll take at least a short break from classical Chinese literature to indulge in French literature via Marcel Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time, and once we gather some serious traction with its 1.2 million words, we’ll be folding The First Crusade by Peter Frankopan into the mix.

Where You Been John?

JWise Moments

Sunrise in Phoenix, Arizona

There are nearly three weeks between my last post and taking the time to sit down for some small talk with myself: the gravity of change that comes with traveling needed a longer moment to settle. That part of me thriving in constant stimulation must allow expectation to fade as I return to a routine and a culture from which I feel increasingly alienated. But this is my life at this time in Phoenix, Arizona, one of bearing witness to the mendacity of a population trying to buy happiness.

Well, the fact of the matter is, I really never stopped writing as I have three documents on my desktop representing some 2,400 words of observations that linger in the realm of uncertainty, meaning that maybe they find their way to the blog, and maybe they don’t. Not that this was all I wrote, but I was also busy dragging some ancient memories out in the writing about Caroline’s adventure at Yarn School in Harveyville, Kansas, back in September 2007. That was triggered by my ongoing attempt to account for every travel day Caroline and I’ve taken since the advent of consumer digital photography.

If you look to the right column of this blog (or near the bottom if you are viewing this on a smartphone), you will see a block with the heading “Other Pages.” At the top of that section is a link to a page titled “Travels In The Digital Age” which is my attempt to eat all of your bandwidth; just kidding. Seriously though, as of today, there are 540 records (images and links) that track our adventures away from home, starting at 9.9.99. I found our oldest digital image, and from there, I’ve tried posting a photo from each day out on the road. So far, I’ve caught up to October 1, 2007. During that time, it appears we were traveling on average 67 days per year, which seems like a lot of vacation, but more precisely, we vacationed 5½ days per month, which doesn’t sound like that much. Ultimately, I think I’ll be adding about another 1,000 images before I catch up to where we are today, but at that time, I’ll probably never recommend someone clicking the link because it will download hundreds of megabytes in imagery. And that moment won’t be very soon as I’m nearly two solid years into trying to bring this effort together.

What’s taking so long to assemble this massive post? As I move from year to year, ensuring I’ve grabbed at least one image from every day we were traveling, I stumble into trips that have never been documented, so I review the photos and try to write something to those. In other cases, I posted only one photo of a trip as bandwidth limitations in those days wouldn’t support the posting of 30 of my favorite images from the 200 – 500 I could shoot in a day. So those posts get updated too, and, luckily, Caroline hunted through a bunch of our old notebooks, discovering travel diaries that came in super handy in fleshing out some of our forgotten stories.

While we were in Germany, I hit a new milestone: 1,500,000 words published here at JohnWise.com. Back in July 2020, I wrote that I’d shared a little more than 1.1 million words, so having written nearly 400,000 between then and now, I’m pretty happy. What does this number mean? Really, nothing at all, though it is a good metric assuring me that I’ve been diligent in exercising my nascent skills. Sadly, my next bragging milestone requires a half-million more words to be written, so after a bit more than another year out, I’ll be posting an entry with the simple title: Two Million.

But does any of this answer “Where I’ve been?” No, it goes into some small details of what I’ve been doing, and the snarky answer of where I’ve been could simply be stated as I’ve been in the milieu. This has become a question that is stymying me as I scan the last couple of weeks trying to discover if there’s been an overarching theme tracing through my mind, and, other than generalized malaise, I can’t put a finger on anything particular. Yet, I have this nagging feeling that just beyond my conscious view there is something preoccupying me and that if I just posed the question of where I’ve been to myself, I’d ponder and then answer this. Nope, not coming up with anything, so I must have been nowhere.

Another Year – 58!

JWise Moments, Photo of the Day, Travels

Caroline Wise and John Wise driving to Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

Woke just before 5:00 a.m. without the assistance of an alarm and got to preparing a hot breakfast prior to a short walk. After a stop for a latte to go, we are heading south in the direction of Tucson. Our destination is Saguaro National Park. Along the way, we return to one of our favorite pastimes, reading out loud. Caroline is closing in on finishing The Greedy Queen: Eating with Victoria by Annie Gray, which is taking an inordinate amount of time due to us not being in the car all that often.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

The particular reason for this day out on the road is that it’s my birthday. Not only are we traveling, but Caroline baked me a cake; well, bread to be more specific although a dessert bread for sure. What kind is it, you ask? Almond, dried apricot, and orange, a yummy favorite of ours from the Moosewood Cookbook.

We were supposed to be heading into New Mexico back on Friday, but after weeks of dithering about where exactly we’d end up, I lost the enthusiasm to pick a place. So, at the last minute, as just this past Friday, we decided to drive to Saguaro National Park.

Caroline Wise at Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

It’s been years since we stopped at the closest national park to the place we call home, though we’ve been meaning to do this for years so Caroline could collect a Junior Ranger badge from here. Today is the day. And it was also the day we forgot our park pass so instead of paying the entry fee, we just went ahead and bought another yearly pass, knowing that the money goes to one of our favorite causes, the preservation of America’s beautiful wildlands.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

After checking in at the visitors center and confirming that someone would be able to accept her workbook we printed at home, we took off for a loop drive down a dirt road so my wife could gather the depth of knowledge about this park that might qualify her as Senior Junior Ranger Woman.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

We intended to take two short walks from the road, but at the first small pullout, seven other cars were parked with absolutely nowhere else to park nearby, so we continued our slow eight mph crawl up the road. We didn’t drive that slow due to the poor conditions of the road, nor did we drive that slow to piss off the people coming up behind us on this narrow path; we drove this slow because under 12mph in our Kia Niro, we are only using electricity and with the windows open the quiet is more befitting the environment.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

I took five shots to get this one reasonable image, but what’s missing is the grand vista stretching for miles with a million cacti between us and the mountains in the distance. This could have been remedied by switching to my 10-22mm wide-angle lens, but I should know better than switching lenses on a dusty road. By the way, how do you like how I coordinated the color of my shirt with the color of my beard?

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

We don’t know which plant this skeleton is from, though it’s obviously not from one of the nearby saguaros but we thought it beautiful enough that it was worthy of snapping an image of. Maybe this will be the photo that propels me virally into social media fame, though that would mean I have to throw it up on Instagram, and well, I’m just about too lazy to even try that.

Caroline Wise at Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

Truth in advertising admission, I’m standing behind Caroline, holding her purse while she goes ahead so I can snag a more “natural” image of her ascending the stairs on this short trail to view some petroglyphs. You might think that it’s no big deal that I’m holding a purse, but do some math regarding today’s birthday, and you’ll see I was born in 1963, and I obviously do not have the DNA to be comfortable holding a purse. As soon as I get the photo I want, I will yell at her to rush back to fetch her purse so I can maintain my illusion of what it means to be a man.

Petroglyphs at Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

There were more approachable petroglyphs at the top of Signal Hill, but this abundance from below was more appealing to me, so here they are.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

I can’t help but wonder if Phoenix and Tucson once looked like this. Meaning a wide-open desert covered with cacti of a number of types but especially saguaro. These sentinels of the Southwest have been known to stand for up to 300 years with one particular now dead specimen having reached a height of over 40 feet with 52 arms. Evolution works by bringing ecosystems into harmony, and so I tend to believe that there’s likely a very good reason why these cacti have these characteristics, and while they are protected today, that doesn’t diminish that we’ve cleaned millions of them off lands where we built houses.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

Sure, it’s great that we at least have pockets of them on lands forbidden to be developed, but what have we lost in our efforts to replace nature with concrete, cinderblocks, and asphalt?

Caroline Wise becoming a Junior Ranger at Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

Poems, puzzles, drawings, and questions across ten pages are now complete and Caroline is being sworn in yet again and awarded a Junior Ranger badge, quite the honor.

Longhorn Grill in Amado, Arizona

For 20 years, we’ve meant to stop in here at the Longhorn Grill so we can claim our bragging rights to having eaten under the world’s largest fossilized steer skull ever found, and now, here on my 58th birthday, which is also the same day Caroline has earned her dozenth Junior Ranger badge, we’ve finally done it. Was it worth it? That depends. Was the food amazing? No way, but we didn’t expect it to be, considering it’s midway between Tucson and Mexico, meaning it’s in a relatively impoverished area of the state, and there isn’t anyone passing through these parts looking for gourmet food. Can I recommend it? Absolutely, because these cherished icons sitting roadside across America won’t be there forever, and often, you meet some amazing fellow travelers who contribute to making our days memorable.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

Earlier, as we drove south out of the national park, I noticed on the GPS a northern section of this western branch of Saguaro that had a road passing through called Picture Rocks Road that we’d never been on. Seeing it had been so many years between visits, there’s the chance we may never pass through this area again, so I figured we should take the detour and check it out, just in case.

We arrived back in Phoenix before 5:30 p.m., which was a lot earlier than I thought we’d be home, but I don’t feel like we diminished our experience of being out for a Sunday drive on Easter during my birthday. As a matter of fact, I’d say this was a gloriously beautiful day that once again presses on my mind to come up with the superlatives that might convey a hint of how perfect this was for Caroline and me, but I guess the old saying, “You had to be there,” rings true and will have to suffice.

Big Plans At The End Of 57

JWise Moments, Travels

Monterey Bay Aquarium Map

Today is the last day of my 57th year; tomorrow, I’ll be 58. But this wasn’t just any old day closing out another year of life. I was working to clean up the grammar of older blog posts when I came across one about the Monterey Bay Aquarium we last visited in 2017. That triggered me to wonder when the aquarium might reopen; well, today was my lucky day as they are making that splash on May 1st to members only and then on the 15th to the general public. If you think that just because we are 700 miles (1,137km) from Monterey, we aren’t members, you are wrong.

Here, just before my birthday, I worked out a nearly 10-day trip and already booked our lodging reservations in the sincere belief that when the aquarium opens reservations on April 26th at 9:00 a.m. PST, I’ll be right there to book our entry for a 10:00 a.m. entry for one of the days we’ll be up there.

Note left at Treebones Resort in Big Sur, California

If that wasn’t exciting enough, I also have us booked at the Lover’s Point Inn in Pacific Grove, just down the street from the aquarium, along with two more unbelievable nights in the Human Nest at Treebones Resort in Big Sur. From there, we’ll head down to Cambria to stay at a place across the street from the ocean. While I still have some details to figure out, the frenzy of having worked all that out requires me to take a break and allow my brain to stop sizzling. This kind of excitement is taxing on old men’s brains, NOT! The photo above is the note I wrote and the drawings Caroline made back at the end of 2010 when, for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, we stayed in the nest but were nearly blown out of our perch; click here to see that post!

Octopus at Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California

While it feels like we’ve been to the aquarium dozens, if not hundreds of times, the truth is more modest. This is our 11th visit in 29 years or hardly enough when I see it this way. Our first time ever in Monterey back in January 1992 included the aquarium and then in 1997, after we’d moved to America, we took my mother-in-law Jutta with us to visit this magic place. In 2001 and 2002, we visited once each year, but in 2004 and 2005, we visited twice each of those years. This was followed by a six-year pause, and we didn’t return until 2011. Another six-year break ensued that culminated with our last visit in 2017. Now, in 2021, seeing this on our horizon, it almost feels like there should have been five or six other visits thrown in there over the years, but obviously, there were other places on the map we wanted to visit, too.

Maybe we’ll make it an even dozen times we’ll have visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium come 2022 when a new “Into The Deep” exhibit is scheduled to open.