TPO#13: Are you a 3rd Wave Coffee Person?
This is The Purposeful Object, a newsletter from Navneet Alang loosely about the techno-modern present and living the good life. This issue: some thoughts on class, taste, and elitism; links to some aching writing and space engines; and in TPO Recommends, some more shoes!
Are Coffee Clichés Condescending?
Lately I’ve been a bit stuck on the idea that what tends to unify almost everyone I am friends with is something you might oversimplify as “elitism.”
Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to come out as a Bari Weiss-esque, intellectual dark Web-loving weirdo. Rather, I am thinking about how the markers of both taste (and by extension, class) that we perform through consumption often feel key to both my own identity and that of my peers.
I suppose it’s most obvious in the clichés about coffee, which I nonetheless think are illustrative. In the coffee hierarchy — you know, Tim’s, Dunkin’, or a diner is 1st wave coffee, Starbucks is 2nd wave, and indie coffee shops are 3rd wave — one gravitates toward either end of the spectrum while avoiding the centre. 1st wave coffee carries with it both the whiff of authenticity but also the association with “the common man.” 3rd wave coffee is marked out as simply “good”, exhibiting a whole range of characteristics from sustainability or responsibility (whether real or not) to notions of craft, originality, and more simply, quality. And meanwhile, Starbucks connotes the emptily generic or mediocre: that which carries neither “true” authenticity nor quality - and, importantly, the mediocrity itself is to what its detractors ascribe its popularity (right?).
It’s a model most obvious in food and drink, but it extends, I think, to everything we tend to obsess over: furniture, clothes, shoes, tech, and of course, the kinds of books you read or films or TV you watch. It’s half “I have decided to dedicate myself to the pursuit of the good” and half “I am too smart and awesome to like things that, ugh, the masses do.”
Yet to reduce taste to a merely performative display would be, well, reductive. A discerning eye is in part about the limits of capitalism — how else are you going to define yourself except through the things you buy? — but also about a desire to resist the homogenizing processes of capitalism itself: the way so many everyday things in the world are, if not bad exactly, then merely adequate, ordinary. Where you end up is: Yeah, everything is dumb and on fire, but I can at least treat myself to the good bottle of natural wine, the good Americano, or a sofa that won’t fall apart after five years.
Does that easily slip into an oblivious or supercilious elitism? Of course it does! That said, I don’t think that in a post-Trump, post-Brexit world we can retreat into faux-postmodern platitudes about either there being no objective standards of taste, or that we must respect everyone’s views. I mean, are you nuts? Some people think asking folks to wear a mask during a global pandemic is a conspiracy.
Instead, what I’m wondering is what does it look like to actually pay attention to things like quality and taste — things not bad in and of themselves — while also not defining one’s identity by being better than other people? That is: How is either a politics, or more plainly, a life well-lived supposed to emerge when you spend all your time looking down on most people?
Ephemera
- A wordless, caption-less video of someone walking around Zoshiki station in Tokyo. Why do I like this so much?
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Here is an absolutely beautiful piece of writing by Annesha Mitha and I don’t know who she is, where I found this link, or why it was in my Pocket. And I really miss that: getting completely knocked on your ass by writing from just some person on the internet who you’ve never heard of and may never hear of again. It doesn’t even matter what it’s about, you know? Anyway, pour a glass of wine or take an edible and sit back and read this.
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You know how sci-fi film and TV always have these clean thrusters on spacecraft and you’re always like “what is this even supposed to be?” NASA is apparently working on their own Ion Engine that, in part, is meant to prevent humanity from being obliterated by an asteroid. Neat!
- Something I think about a lot is how to keep the world cool without getting stuck in the cycle of: using more air conditioners –> making climate change worse –> needing more air conditioners. As it turns out, Singapore is on to something with something I used to joke about on Twitter: air conditioners but big enough for a city block.
TPO Recommends
TPO Recommends is/was a recurring feature in which I recommend things that I think are, well, good. At least until a few more thousand people subscribe to TPO and I can do affiliate links, this is all commission-free, honest Nav-Opinion stuff.
You know, I’m starting to suspect that the purpose of TPO Recommends might in fact be to actually just review all those shiny Instagram-y ad products that populate our feeds. I’m such an absolute sucker for them that I can’t stop ordering them, so I may as well just review them here. I mean I just bought plates from some online brand! Whyyyy? I don’t have any money!! Why am I buying plates?! Oof.
Anyway, this’ll be my second shoe recommendation since TPO started, but: Casca Designs sells shoes that come with a 5 year warranty and the claim at least is that they are aiming for a less disposable fashion culture. I cannot yet verify if that is true but I did in fact order the shoes and what I can tell you is that they are sturdy, super comfortable, and to my uncultured eyes, sort of stylish. Whether or not the claims of durability hold up is something that I will have to return to, but for now I really like these shoes. They come in a knit version at around C$200, and a waterproof leather version (so they claim) for a little more, which is definitely not cheap. Whether or not they are worth that money is something I can’t yet know, but you can break up the cost with Sezzle.
That’s it for this issue, folks. Remember, you can support the creation of this newsletter and my writing by signing up for a subscription for US$2.50 a month, or just telling your friends to do that.