#workshop cafe

Espresso: $2.50 Coffee: $2.50  Cappuccino: $3.50 Tea: $4

You’ve probably watched a cat video or two online, but have you ever watched cat videos for an hour and a half straight? That’s exactly what we found ourselves doing on a Saturday in January. 

I surprised Fred with tickets to the Internet Cat Video Festival, which compiles the year’s best cat videos into a full-length movie. I even got a cat tattoo, or “cattoo,” before the show. 

Afterward, we wandered block after block in search of a nice cafe and finally found Workshop. It’s kind of a hybrid cafe/coworking space, where you can pay $3 per hour to sit in their special working section - which seems cheap, but must net them a pretty penny from workaholic entrepreneurs. 

  The Workshop Café, located in San Francisco’s financial district, is home to the first BitAccess Bitcoin Teller Machine (BTM) in the city. 

This BTM in the Bay Area is important because of its proximity to Silicon Valley. Numerous bitcoin companies in the area, including BitAccess, are building the future of digital currencies. 

The machine will be permanently installed at the entrance of the Workshop Café, at 180 Montgomery St. in San Francisco. 

A place for people to work, meet or just get a quick coffee, the Workshop Café signifies the beginning of many BitAccess BTM deployments within the United States.

This also is a landmark in terms of the partnership between BitAccess and US BTM operator Zenbox. Santa Monica, California-based Zenbox will be launching a number of BTMs across the United States in the coming months. 

This summer, I've gone down the rabbit hole on a story about how good coffee got in Vietnam.

If you want to find out, quickly--get yourself to Workshop coffee at 27 Ngo Duc Ke and just order everything. 

I have literally lost my mind in this place, which I treat as some bizarro-world opium den. I'll come in and just spend my entire day loading up on wonderful Red Bourbon and Lao Typica and Indian Peaberry. 

Some days, I seem to drink gallons of the stuff and disappear into what I have no doubt are the borderline stages of Caffeine-Induced Psychosis. 

On Saturday, I celebrated the return of one Will Frith with a coffee bender that included a single-origin ristretto, an espresso, a cappuccino and what probably amounted to a liter and a half of assorted filter coffee (Kenya, Laos, Vietnam).

Here, Mr. Frith poured me an El Salvadoran bean roasted by some Singaporean muckity mucks. The names are all gone--along with most of the specific memories of the day.

I hope I never forget how goddamned good this cup tasted.

The words "plum," "cloves" "vanilla bean" and "maple sweetness" were printed on the label.

But none of those really suffice to describe the flavor.

I had to get up super early to "participate" in the office morning meeting. It's a sit down "stand-up" where folks go around the table and spill what they will be working on that day. There is a two hour time difference between here and home, so I basically rolled out of bed and got on the phone. Good thing it's not a video conference.

Anyway, I ended up working an extra long time today because of the early start. By 5PM San Francisco time, I was ready to jet. I decided that I should try to go shopping to pick up a jacket or something because it is chilly here. I guess I forget that even in July it is flippin cold here. 72 degrees on the coast is not the same thing as 72 at home. I blame the ocean. So I tried to go shopping, which really just means that I walked around a whole lot and went into some stores and got frustrated because I A) Could not find what I was looking for B) Didn't like the prices of things.

Basically, I can afford to shop at Macy's because I don't shop at Macy's. There was one store I went in that had some really cute things but the price was outrageous and I just can't justify it today. I don't "need" anymore clothes and I can get by with what I brought. This exercise in futility reminds me how much I hate shopping. I know you have heard it before, but it bears repeating. I'm making a mental note that there is another blog post hidden in all of this about other reasons why.

I ended up walking around for a good hour and a half, and by the end, I had made one purchase that caused enough regret that I decided to just quit and return back to the cafe where I started the day so I could blog. That is where we are now. Matt has joined me and is just waiting for me to finish so we can take off and find some food. Hopefully we will find another place worthy of blogging about like this place... The WorkShop Cafe.

Two Turn Tables and a Microphone,