Evelyn’s Coffee Bar, Banff, AB

Sitting in a coffee shop, ruminating as the world goes by on a gray and rainy day - and then writing about it - is an awfully cliche way of eating the world. I’m not even, at this point, sure of where I picked it up as a habit. Was is just suffused in my by popular culture, some third-order derivative product of the Seattle scene? Did I come by it honestly? Do I even like coffee?

At any rate, I sure think I like coffee, and sitting in coffee shops contemplatively - with or without masses of people, with or without the loud noise of a city, of civilization. As it happens, I’m getting the best of all possible worlds right now, a beautiful mountain view in the distance, a busy coffee shop around me, a sidewalk full of humanity passing by outside and then, just past the sidewalk, absolutely hellish amounts of noise from a Cat shovel tearing up the street. It’s glorious - the quiet of the mountains is wonderful, but a week of it has found me craving the awful, glorious succor of humanity’s destructive noises. Trains passed by the lodge last night, and that was a start, but the diesel and electric and metal and stone and dirt is rattling the table here, and that makes me happy. And now there’s the smell of cigarette smoke wafting in from outside, which is really nice.

The coffee: I really need to stop ordering double espressos, as each one I’ve had here has been dumped into a cappuccino cup, allowing whatever crema there’s been to disperse into islands around the inky black. The taste - not bad, but I should really go with a single next time to actually judge the quality.

UPDATE: Had the single. Still not good. The baristas are... not particularly committed to their craft.