Granted, the title of this post could also be "Whiskey Is The Writer's BFF" but it's kind of early in the morning for booze, don't you think? (The answer is, of course: No. No it's not. But let's pretend for the sake of what is socially appropriate that we all totally agree drinking before nine in the morning is not cool.) Most of us drink coffee. A lot of coffee. Coffee keeps us up at four in the morning when we just need to finish that last chapter, it keeps us sharp when our eyes want to go crossed and we start breathing blue, and it's the first thing we reach for when we stumble into the kitchen after a few hours of dream-filled sleep where our muses punished us for our dishonesty.
Or maybe that's just me.
Anyway, coffee. It's a glorious, wonderful, beautiful drink. Some of it is better than the rest. I know a lot of people swear by Starbucks, but... meh. I mean, it'll do in a pinch, and I guess it's better quality than Folgers. (Ever since I got a French press, I judge a coffee's quality based on whether I can drink it black straight from the press. Starbucks dark roasts pass, Folgers does not. I was a diehard Folgers drinker for many, many years, so this was a crushing realization.) I prefer Seattle's Best when I'm given the chance and Dilanos above that (though Dilanos is hard to get outside of northwest Washington state in my experience).
But the absolute best coffee I have ever had, ever, was Bad Ass Coffee. It even has a story.
A few years ago, while my husband was deployed and I was a receptionist and there was no kiddo in my life, I planned a cross-country road trip to visit a friend in Hollywood and do silly things like go to Disneyland and the tar pits. Along the way, I was planning to hit several archaeological sites, like Aztec Ruins and Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon, then spend a night in my favorite southwestern city, Flagstaff. My friend found herself without a job a week or so before my planned trip, so rather than wait for me to get to her, she hopped a plane to me and we drove west together. It was amazing. She is the very best road trip buddy in the whole entire world. We saw Aztec Ruins and stayed at the Step Back Inn. We spent several hours driving around Albuquerque looking for liquor. We spent the night in Flagstaff, where we stayed up late having coffee in a diner near our hotel. It was a fantastic vacation even though we couldn't find a place to have pancakes in Winslow.
Thanks, in part, to Bad Ass Coffee. In Arizona, we had to take a detour. This detour took us on state highways instead of the interstate, and on the side of one of these highways, I saw a sign for a ridiculously named coffee shop. Come on, seriously? Bad Ass? With a name like that, it either had to be really good or really bad. So we turned around. We found the cafe. We parked. We went inside. And we ordered.
And then, the next day, we took another special detour. Because there was another one outside of Phoenix, according to the Google search she did on her phone.
Bad Ass Coffee is perfect, delicious Hawaiian coffee and no matter what you do to it, it's amazing. If you click the link and check out the store, you might have a mild heart attack at the prices. Pay them anyway. It's worth it.
And if you're ever in the Los Angeles area, I seriously recommend Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. They serve some pretty great Hawaiian coffee, too.
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