On Caffeine

Forget Seattle. Sure, that foggy bottom by the sea may have spawned the jolly green giant of the latte-sipping everyman, but this is a different time, a different place. Caffeine today is a science or art, far removed from corporate apron-clad friendlies, a hawkish realm of the steely and the awake.

The evidence is mounting. Opening a scant four weeks ago, Society has brought the high-concept coffee bar to an until-recently unthinkable locale-the corner of 114th Street and Fredrick Douglas Boulevard, formerly a no man's land for students. Scion of gentrification it may be, but the most remarkable thing is that the owner and longtime Harlem resident, Karl Franz, managed to beat Starbucks to the punch. This is not an espresso culture imposed from the outside: this is a buzz from within.

The same has played out farther south, first with Saurin Parke Cafe on 110th Street and Fredrick Douglas Circle, and more recently at La Negrita, 108th Street at Columbus Avenue. While Seattle's pride, not to mention Oren's or other chains, have clung to Broadway, the forces of urban renewal seem to have percolated on their own.

This schism has poured onto campus as well, with the switch in the International Affairs Building lounge from just any old beans to one of Italy's proud roasts, Illy. Call it the breakdown of brand loyalty, or call it the growth of coffee consciousness, but the migratory herds of Morningside have split themselves between those mooching Starbuck's wireless, and those jamming SIPA.

The Red Bull vending machines popping up across campus are next in the natural progression of caffeine from stimulant to social mooring and now into the guise of staple, as natural as the sun peering through the haze.

Perhaps this has led the Caffeine Awareness Alliance to bring National Caffeine Awareness Month to these hallowed halls. The group, headed by author and activist Marina Kushner, has enlisted Professor Oded Netzer of the business school to head the charge. Several of his students are developing unique marketing strategies for the March event, leading the push against what they deem the most common drug in the world, a little white powder that may just be too far ingrained into the fabric of society.