Dana Gooley

WASHINGTON-- Six mornings a week, Vigilante Coffee opens at 1017 7th street, in Mount Vernon Square. The interior-- red walls, leather booths and spray painted tables-- may not seem like the typical “coffee shop” decor, but Vigilante Coffee isn’t your typical coffee shop. It’s a pop-up shop, which means the set up isn’t permanent. After closing at 2 pm, the coffee shop turns into Hogo, a bar and restaurant.

   Inside, Christopher Vigilante and his small team serve flat whites, long blacks, and macchiatos, among other espresso drinks. Don’t worry if those terms sound unfamiliar-- it’s expected. Employees are more than happy to explain them, and give you a bit of background on the beans as well.

  Actually, more than a bit of background. Besides having one of the best last names in the business, Chris also has an extensive knowledge of all things coffee-related. He can tell you the story of the drink in your cup from farm to foam topping. He’s involved in every step of the process, and it’s important to him that you know what you’re drinking and where it’s from.

  Before Vigilante Coffee really took off, Chris had the opportunity to present President Obama with a very unique type of coffee bean, one that even he’d never tried before.

  “Well, it was cat poop coffee, to be exact”, Chris says. Kopi Luwak, or Civet coffee, is the most expensive coffee in the world, but it’s also, literally, made from cat poop. Civet cats digest the coffee cherries, and after a process of fermentation in the digestive tract, release the beans inside the feces. Chris snuck a taste of the luxury coffee the night before it went to Obama, only to find it tasted, in his words, “like musty man on the subway.”

  But, since it wasn’t his company, he passed the beans along anyway. And that was that, until about three months later, when a letter from the White House arrived at the cafe where Chris was working. It was a generic, two-paragraph letter thanking him for the gift, but it counted for something. “One of the interns said it went into the oval office, and that’s good enough for me-- I got this letter back,” he says, “then my mom hijacked the letter and I haven’t seen it since.”

  Vigilante Coffee is the first “third wave” coffee roaster in D.C. For those unfamiliar with the term, third wave refers to the recent movement in specialty coffee, focusing on seasonally available products and strong partnerships with small farmers. “It’s outside of just profit-driven, ‘make as much money as you can in the city’,” Chris says, “it’s more relationship-focused.“

For Chris, it all began in Hawaii. After his parents moved to Honolulu during his sophomore year at Virginia Tech University, he just saw it as a chance to surf. However, after watching some of his friends graduate with no career paths, he started looking for a way to combine his love of surfing with his love of coffee shops. “Why don’t I just pick something that I’m going to really love and be passionate about, and then if that doesn’t work out I’ll go sit in a cubicle and make money,” Chris says, “that’s my backup plan. Once you have the degree, that’s what you can do, right?”

  He responded to an ad on craigslist looking for a barista, even though he had no previous experience. But, Chris was persistent. “I went to the shop every day for about a week and a half, until finally he said ‘ok, you get the job’.” Chris started at Downtown Coffee, a tiny store in downtown Honolulu with a staff of two-- himself and Charles, the owner. Charles sourced his coffee from local farms in Hawaii, some of whom Chris still buys from today. Working with Charles, forming partnerships with family-owned farms and learning how to roast the beans, Chris developed the skills he would later use to found Vigilante Coffee.

  The company sources coffee from Hawaii, Columbia and Guatemala, and they’re expanding. Chris is planning a trip to El Salvador in November, and a recent trip to Indonesia had to be postponed due to an unexpected increase in business.

According to Chris, the coffee shop staff makes it possible to accomplish as much as they do. “I have an awesome team,” he says, “everybody that’s on our staff is incredible, and they work really hard. They care about what they do.”  

  The team’s hard work is paying off. In the spring, Vigilante Coffee is moving to a more permanent location. The coffee company will be a part of Maketto, a new market on H Street, along with Toki Underground and Durkl Clothing. The market’s combination roastery-coffee bar will allow the Vigilante staff to teach classes on roasting, brewing sciences, and other coffee-related subjects. Says Chris, “Basically, we can educate people when they want to be educated, instead of forcing it on them.”

According to Chris, D.C. is definitely ready for good coffee. The transition from pop-up shop to permanent location wouldn’t be possible without the excess of coffee chains in the city. “Put us next to a Starbucks-- that’s a good thing,” he says, “it shows what’s good and what’s not.”

  Chris and his team put a lot of effort into each individual cup-- and bean. Vigilante Coffee receives “green” unroasted beans from their farm sources, which allows them to highlight the flavors of different regions based on roasting strength. With the wrong roast, it’s easy to lose the flavor. A coffee chain might offer six different regional blends, but if they’re all dark roasted, no one can tell the difference. “It’s very hard to dissect which coffee is which-- which is Columbian, which is Sumatran, what the difference is,” Chris says, “They all taste pretty similar, right?”

  Starting out, Chris had the connections from Downtown Coffee, and not much else. “Our only sources were Hawaii for a while, and people kept telling me ‘wow, your Hawaiian’s amazing, but some of the other coffees are a little lacking’,” Chris says, “Mainly because we were using importers in New York and California. I realized the only way it’s ever going to be good enough is if we go out and get it.”

  When deciding on his trip to Columbia, Chris had a little help from a coffee celebrity. The wise words of Gordon Bowker, the original founder of Starbucks, sent him packing to South America. One of Chris’s customers was related to Bowker, and offered to pass along the entrepreneur’s phone number, in case Chris wanted to chat.

  “I gave him a call and explained what my problem was – I was lacking in quality outside of the Hawaiian”, Chris says, “and he said ‘You’re like a wine store that only sells Merlot. You have to go get better stuff.’ And that was it. I think I bought my ticket to Columbia about a week later.”

“There’s no map with the route to good coffee”, Chris says, “I really had to figure it out myself. I got lucky in a lot of ways.” The trip was successful—Vigilante Coffee formed partnerships with three farms in Columbia, all of whom Chris still works with today. Those relationships formed in Columbia led to coffee connections in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Bolivia and El Salvador.

  “I really think that’s what changed my business”, Chris says, “going to get the best coffee, not just taking what somebody handed me. I want to go there, I want to see who I’m working with, I want to taste the coffee at farm level, I want to really get to know it.”

  For those that prefer their coffee straight and simple, cream and sugar, the world of pour overs and cappuccinos can be intimidating. Unfriendly, über-knowledgable baristas only add to the confusion. At Vigilante Coffee, the baristas know their stuff, but they’re as friendly as can be.

   “I don’t want to be that kind of coffee company”, says Chris, “I want to be customer service first, then quality as a close second. You have to find that balance of creating something great without being pretentious, without putting your attitude on it.”

  Chris gives credit where credit is due, and he expects his staff to do the same. He knows how much hard work goes into each cup he serves, and it’s important that the farmers are recognized as much as the baristas. 

  “I learned coffee from tree to cup. I started at the farm level and learned it all the way up to the roast and barista side. It gave me a huge appreciation for what they all do. I try to put that emphasis on our employees-- it’s your job to make sure you don’t mess up a long line of hard work.”

  If you’re still not interested in Vigilante Coffee’s flat whites, they do serve drip coffee. The “Quick Cup”, once worth 65% of their business, is now down to about 10%, Chris estimates. “That means that more people are going to the top of the menu and saying, ‘I want to know what a Columbian from San Sebastian Cooperative tastes like. I want to know what a Columbian Peaberry tastes like’.”

  Chris’s coffee is served in over 25 bars and restaurants in the greater D.C. area. Vigilante Coffee also frequents farmers markets around the area, making the company hard to miss. Seems like people enjoy the taste of Columbian Peaberry.

  As for the future, Chris and his team are looking forward to the move to H Street.  “We’re working hard to get where we think we belong, and where we want to go”, Chris says, “We’re going to do something this city has never seen. We’re going to set the bar a little higher.”

On Saturday, June 1, bikers and beer lovers alike took to the streets of Southeast D.C. for the Tour de Fat parade and performance event. The festival was held at Yards Park and was sponsored by New Belgium Brewing Company.

On Saturday, June 1, bikers and beer lovers alike took to the streets of Southeast D.C. for the Tour de Fat parade and performance event. The festival was held at Yards Park and was sponsored by New Belgium Brewing Company.

WASHINGTON-- George Washington stands atop a pastry case in Arlington, Virginia’s Bayou Bakery, holding a sickle and a sack of grains. The figurine, purchased at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, belongs to restaurant owner David Guas. Seeing as the Mount Vernon grist mill supplies all the bakery’s cornmeal and grits, Guas figured a little tribute was in order. The historic mill uses corn from local Virginia farmers to create the freshly-ground ingredients Bayou Bakery cooks with. The partnership wasn’t instant-- after competing in a cornmeal hoecake bakeoff at the estate, Guas wanted more. “They didn’t have any delivery ideas, they didn’t have any idea of price, we just made it work, and now I physically go to Mount Vernon to the grist mill and pick up my cornmeal”, he says. While Bayou Bakery is covering both the local and historical bases, other area chefs are working to locally source the food they put on your restaurant table.

In a metropolitan area like D.C., finding farm-fresh produce can be difficult. Finding organic, locally grown food is even harder. However, to some chefs, going the extra mile for natural food is worth it-- for reasons more than taste. Partnerships between independent, family-owned farms and local restaurants are mutually beneficial: buying directly from farmers gives chefs the freshest food possible, and allows the producers to profit more than if they sold to retailers. Less than 2 percent of the American population works in agriculture, and many family-owned farms struggle to stay in business.

Thanks to increasing demand for organic, natural food, things are starting to look up for independent producers. Some restaurants form relationships with farms across the country. At District Commons in Foggy Bottom, the popular “Pig Board” features ham from Norwalk, Iowa. According to chef Aaron Daniels, La Quercia Farms’ high quality pork is worth the distance. “The fact that they even source the salt they use to cure the meat from right here in America, it just makes it such an uber local product,” he says. “It’s something we want to support, and it just wows our customers, so really it’s a win-win.”

For chef Andrew Evans, of Easton, MD.’s BBQ Joint, the differences between humanely raised, hormone-free meat and generic supermarket meat are clear. He wants you to imagine a rope. “Think about a rope as a muscle strand”, Evans says.  “If you have a whole bunch of strands of rope, they’re going to trap more water than a few bigger, fatter strands. If you dip a mop in a bucket of water it can hold a lot of moisture. if you dip three strands of rope in the water it’s not going to hold much.” Hormones used to speed up the growing process of mass-produced meat often result in tougher, less flavorful meat. To Evans, higher-quality proteins have a finer muscle development--multiple strands of rope-- and no other meat compares. As a barbecue pitmaster and a restaurant owner, he won’t serve anything else.

To some, sourcing food from multiple farms might be a hassle, but for Chef Guas, it’s a privilege. As someone who considers fresh, organically grown food a customer’s right, knowing when and where his produce is coming from is a big deal. Take, for example, his relationship with Pearson Farm, his pecan supplier. The Georgia family farm provides the nuts Guas uses in his desserts. “What I love about dealing with farmers and vendors like them is that there’s a date on the box, a harvest date, so you know [the nuts] are not just sitting in some warehouse... these guys are picking them and shelling them during the harvest, and we’re getting them a week or so later” says Guas, “you don’t often think about nuts as a fresh crop”.

At District Commons, Chef Daniels pays attention to the seasons. There are certain things the restaurant can’t buy seasonally, like lettuce, but the chefs work to include as much natural, small-batch produce as possible. “When you pop something in your mouth that’s cared for, that’s created by a small producer, you’re going to taste the difference easily”, he says.

Organic living is hugely popular, and attaching “all-natural” to a product makes it almost fly off the shelves. Most restaurants jump at the chance to advertise their sustainability-- so why is Guas so quiet about his?  “I think it’s more of an obligation that we have, rather than something to promote”, says Guas, “I can sleep at night knowing that I’m offering a quality but also a well-sourced, safe product.”

Shuttling around from market to market for organic, local food is a lot of work, but Guas is more than willing to do it. And he comes bearing gifts-- on Saturdays he can be found handing out Bayou Bakery Beignets to his frequent vendors. His relationships with the farmers are important. Not only does Guas receive the highest quality produce for his customers, he also supports the independent farmers that care about quality over quantity. As chef Daniels puts it, “the more you support those around you, the better for both the economy, and for your palate-- why not benefit both?”

WASHINGTON-- It’s late Thursday night in Chevy Chase, D.C. Families are quietly going about their business, putting their kids to sleep and getting ready for the next day. Meanwhile, in a garage on the eastern side of the neighborhood, four guys are very seriously studying the chord progression of a Top 40 pop hit. They pick up their instruments and start playing Icona Pop’s summer anthem, “I Love It”.

        “I got this feeling on a summer day when you were gone…” The Farrah Fawcett poster very nearly comes off the wall as Peter, Louis, Vinny and Hunter tear into the song. Tangled wires and carpet squares are trampled underfoot, and beer bottles vibrate on top of the amplifiers. This is PRINCESS, your average amateur rock band. Except, of course, the band members are middle aged dads- - and high powered Washington lawyers.

        The PRINCESS origin story is long and mildly complicated. Peter Willsey met Louis Smith at a birthday party for one of Peter’s kids, and then the two picked up Hunter Bennett at an elementary school picnic. Vinny Badolato came into the picture when the trio realized its current drummer wasn’t cutting it. Thus, PRINCESS was born.

        The name came from a little pink “princess” rug that belonged to one of Peter’s daughters.

“One day we walked across it”, Peter explains, “And one of us said…”

Louis interjects: “Or maybe both of us”.

        “Probably both of us said, ‘that would be a great name for a band of people playing, just… angry music.’”

Hunter looks up from the acoustic guitar he’s playing.

“I thought it was the worst name I’d ever heard, so when they asked me to play with them I kept saying ‘Yeah, yeah, maybe we should call ourselves this,’ but they were adamant that we be PRINCESS.”

The guys have an excellent sense of humor about everything, including themselves.

“The thing to remember is that we really like our audience to laugh with us, but if they’re unwilling to do so, and just want to laugh at us, we’re perfectly OK with that,” Hunter says.  

PRINCESS has a “black sheep” kind of appeal- they listened to their parents, went to law school, got jobs and yet they still don’t play by the rules. Too many people grow up and leave their dreams behind. These four guys did the opposite. Despite being successful lawyers- and teachers- they still find time to do what they love: play punk rock covers of pop songs in Peter’s garage.

        The band has been together for about four years.

“We’d get together at like, one or two in the morning after work, drink beers, play music really loud, scream…”, Louis says.

They’ve dabbled in writing original material, producing songs such as “Chevy Chase Blues” and the even more popular “Chevy Chase Cougars.” But they prefer the freedom of experimenting with the work of other musicians.  

“I feel like the songs we select are ones that have sort of an implicit humor in them… and usually we just massacre them, or sometimes we make them better,” Hunter says.

According to Vinny, it all depends on who’s in the audience.

        “We can tell you who’s not in our fanbase,” he says, referring to a disastrous performance at a private school fundraiser during which the large majority of the audience left during the first set.

        “They were not at all down with us being in all leather,” Peter adds, “I think that bothered them right off the bat.”

        Louis thinks highly of the band’s true fans. “Real connoisseurs of the craft of musicianship…”

        “Make sure you put a laugh track after that”, Vinny adds.

When the guys first started playing together, all four were lawyers. Now, Louis has moved on to teaching. The other three still practice law during the week. On the weekends, it’s anyone’s guess what they’ll do. PRINCESS has played over 50 shows at local bars, company functions, block parties, school events, and Banding Together, a battle of the bands fundraiser for Gifts For The Homeless, a charity organization that serves the D.C. homeless population.

Volunteers collect donations of used clothes, like sweatshirts, coats, hats and gloves, and distribute them to over seventy homeless shelters in the greater D.C. area. The fundraising efforts of Banding Together, and the expanding network of volunteers, allows the organization to purchase necessities like underwear, socks and other clothing items that are tough to donate.

GFTH is comprised entirely of volunteers from area law firms, corporate legal departments, and government legal personnel. The organization has no paid staff and no overhead costs, so every donation directly benefits the shelters with whom GFTH works.

        Walter Lohmann, the GFTH board member who created Banding Together, explains how the overhead costs are absorbed.

        “All of the internal expenses of the group- if we need a ladder for the sorting location or if we need a string of lights to light up our loading dock- individual board members pick up those expenses so that in terms of our outside donations, we maintain this hundred percent arrangement,” he says.  

        Like the volunteers, all competing bands in the event are made up of lawyers and legal personnel. PRINCESS, with members representing Cooley, LLP, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP,  and the Department of Justice, performed last year, and were shocked they were invited to return.

        “I have to admit, when we played last year I definitely thought they would never have us back again because I thought we were going to horrify the audience with what we did… but they were tolerant”, Peter says, sounding surprised, “they were into it.”

        This year, PRINCESS is competing against 17 other bands. “I think it’s starting to run our band coordinator, Dan Buchner, a little ragged,” says Lohmann. “I think we may be maxing at 18 bands. But we don’t want to turn anybody down.”

        Dan might be stressing about this year’s lineup, but he’s amazed at how far the event has come.

        “I think the first year we had a handful of bands- five or six- at a small club in upper Georgetown… they might have raised about $5,000. Last year we had 16 bands on two stages, and we raised something like $300,000 that night.”

The contest winner is determined by “Chicago style” voting, which means you should vote early and often. The band that receives the highest quantity of “votes”- determined by dollars donated- wins. Some bands, like Sutherland Comfort- representing Sutherland, Asbill, and Brennan, LLP- get creative with their fundraising.

        Buchner, who’s a member of Sutherland Comfort, says they’ve pit partners against each other in the past to foster a sense of competition among them and to raise as much money for the organization as possible. And winning would be nice, of course, although Dan is modest. “Our chances are good, but I don’t think it’s a lock”.

PRINCESS has an unofficial motto, “sometimes it’s not about the music”, that applies to a lot of the band’s experiences, including this event. Banding Together isn’t about musical talent or winning a prize. It’s about bringing people together to have fun for a good cause.

“I hope that we draw an even bigger crowd this year,” Buchner says. “I think that the need has never been greater than it is right now- the need that Gifts For The Homeless aims to fulfill- and making sure that we have a good turnout, raise a lot of money and have a good time doing it, is really important.”

Back in the garage, PRINCESS is discussing its place in the lineup. Banding Together lasts from 7 p.m. to midnight, but the guys want the crowd to stick it out, if possible.

“You gotta make it to the end, because we’re playing second to last”, Vinny says, as Louis looks concerned.

“Second to last again?”

Hunter doesn’t see a problem with this.

“That way the fans are like a captive audience.”

That’s PRINCESS for you- captive or captivated, they’ll play for you either way.

Photo courtesy of Susie Taylor

  WASHINGTON-- Do you know where your clothes come from? Think beyond the store you bought them in. Your receipt might say Forever 21, but the clothing tag says otherwise. What does “Made in Bangladesh” really mean? One D.C. local can tell you about the high costs of cheap fashion.

Susie Taylor, a Bloomingdale resident and creator of The OM Project wants to bring attention to the bottom of the fast fashion supply chain-- the factory workers. The women and men that work in unsafe conditions for far below minimum wage produce clothing quickly and cheaply enough that large retailers are able to sell the goods at an incredibly low price. Most shoppers are unaware of the other costs involved with buying cheap clothes. However, in the wake of recent events-- like the Rana Plaza factory collapse -- many people are looking to buy sweatshop-free.

Enter The OM Project. “The One More (OM) Project” aims to create fair employment opportunities as well as empower female entrepreneurs. This is not a charity. Taylor believes that personal empowerment lasts much longer than donations. The OM Bag, a large tote made of plant fibers and repurposed saris, is handmade by Bangladeshi women working in fair, safe conditions. Taylor’s goal is to turn “Made in Bangladesh” into a positive thing.

Taylor and one of her assistant project managers polled people outside of an H&M one weekend, curious to see how far back people could trace their fast fashion. What they found wasn’t surprising. “It was interesting to see some people immediately get very nervous that we were talking to them and become even more transparent than a normal person would be, just putting themselves out there”, says Taylor. Shoppers confessed to not checking their labels, and not knowing what went into the creation of their clothes. But she’s not trying to shame them.

“You know, there’s a very common saying that if we were to do everything right, we’d all be naked and hungry. And there’s a good point there,” she says, “My recommendation is to shop where you have goods from local artists and you can possibly learn what creative process they went through to make it”. Otherwise, do what you can. “Long story short, I think people, if they have a choice, they want to care”, says Taylor.

She recommends a book called “Confessions of an Eco-Sinner” for those looking to learn more about sustainability and production at the bottom of the supply chain. The book, by journalist Fred Pearce, follows several household goods he takes for granted from raw material to finished product. “It’s a great book because you realize how many hands things pass through and how little money is made on the way, until it lands in our retail stores,” says Taylor.

With the OM Bag, Taylor and the OM Project hope to topple this unbalanced pyramid of profit. The OM model is smart: pair an established, trustworthy manufacturer with a growing female entrepreneur, and develop a mutually beneficial relationship between the two. In the case of the OM Bag, Taylor and the project brought together Saidpur Enterprises and SourceFK , two Bangladeshi employers with a commitment to ethical business practices.

Saidpur Enterprises has been operating for over 40 years, paying its workers a daily minimum wage, with the ability to earn more-- essentially impossible at factories like Rana Plaza. According to Taylor, Saidpur Enterprises has helped lift an entire generation of displaced refugees out of poverty. “They went from living in refugee camps along the Indian border, to a generation where children are literally graduating with higher education degrees.” For someone like Taylor, who’s been to Bangladesh and seen the tragedy of factory life firsthand, the success of Saidpur Enterprises is uplifting.

The real struggle is changing the business practices of bigger manufacturers. According to Taylor, the power lies with the people. “What we want to do with the OM project is what women's groups are doing around the world-- standing up to say that it is your peer group and and it’s my peer group that can stand up and flex our muscles. We have serious purchasing power together. This may be on the other side of the world, it may be an out of sight out of mind thing, but if we handle ourselves well, we seek to find out what’s going on, we’ll realize that when we demand that artisan goods become more readily available they'll become cheaper because demand for them will grow up. And when we say ‘H&M i love that you recycle the same shit every month in a different color, but I really don’t want to buy it’, they’ll stop being able to sell it so cheaply.”

To help potential sweatshop-free consumers get started, Taylor says comparing clothes to food is the way to go.

“What I hope that people do this year is to start to conceptualize their clothing the way that we are beginning to conceptualize our food-- you wouldn’t put hydrogenated oils and estrogen into your body all day every day if you knew what it was doing to you. Same thing-- you wouldn’t put those threads anywhere near your skin if you knew where they came from.”