Comments on: East Bay Express: Surfing Coffee’s “Third Wave”

By: Luigi

Luigi — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 03:17:12 +0000

I have to agree Luke, as a cafe owner and also someone representing a Bay Area roaster, I tend to shy away from using the “Third Wave” terminology, but I felt that your article was well informed.

By: TheShot

TheShot — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:52:51 +0000

Thanks for the notes, and the good article, Luke. I don’t give out compliments lightly, and I thought you handled the subject quite well.

By: Luke

Luke — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:13:32 +0000

Also, since you mentioned it, Trish Rothgeb actually told me that she had been reading books on “third wave feminism” when she coined the term–I believe she said that was part of how she came up with the idea.

By: Luke

Luke — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:58:29 +0000

Thanks for the link and for the response, Greg (and for your helpfulness with the article). I acknowledge and appreciate your distaste for the “third wave” label, but felt it would be disingenuous to skirt around the term–since, to me, the wide range of opinions on the “movement” (if it is that) was more or less the point.

As a relative newcomer to “serious” coffee, I don’t have a horse in this race, so to speak. In fact, I’d never even heard the term “third wave” until I started talking to these cafe owners, most of whom strongly identified themselves that way. I do find the back and forth to be pretty interesting.

More important to me, as a customer rather than as a journalist, is the fact that many of these places–whatever you want to call them–are serving some pretty damned good coffee.

By: espressophile

espressophile — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:26:55 +0000

I had been trying to determine whether Blue Bottle would have some kind of storefront since moving to Jack London Square. It’s good to know that they will.

I’ve been to SubRosa, and it definitely gets my vote as a quality place. Hopefully, I’ll check out the others soon. But East Bayers would be amiss to miss two other strong contenders: Pacific Bay Coffee in Walnut Creek, and Steeltown Coffee in Pittsburg (which uses coffee from Pacific Bay). A little far, yes.