2539: Hipster Coffee

I was a little early going into town for work this morning, so I stopped for a coffee. The Starbucks I usually stop at was pretty heaving, so I went over the road to a place that has relatively recently opened but which I hadn’t tried before: an apparent chain (I’ve seen at least two in various parts of Southampton) called Coffee #1. And I think it’s the most hipster place I’ve ever been in.

If I were to say the words “hipster coffee shop” to you, picture what you think I mean for a moment. Chances are you’re imagining a place with wooden floors, eclectic art lining the walls and overly familiar, jocular writing on the menu. And, of course, lots of 20-year old mean with beards and overly elaborate moustaches browsing Instagram on their iPads. And blue-haired, slightly overweight women staring morosely at their mobile phones, flipping idly through social media rather than actually talking to the person sitting across the table from them.

Coffee #1 was exactly like this, and then some. The art on the walls seemed to have no coherent theme whatsoever, running the gamut from an enlarged diagram of how to correctly hitch a horse to a post to framed covers of Tintin comics and Tolkien novels. The furniture wasn’t much better; I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a single matching chair in the entire place. And this wasn’t the case that you find in some coffee shops where maybe a chair breaks so they have to bring out an “emergency chair” from the back room to fill a gap; no, this seemed like a distinct effort to make everything mismatched. It was sort of impressive in a faintly insufferable sort of way.

Coffee #1 wasn’t a bad place to go for coffee by any means; the coffee itself was nice and at least came in proper mugs rather than artisanal blown glass jars or something, but the whole experience I had while I was there was just one of the place itself trying far too hard. “Look at me!” it seemed to say. “I’m quirky and kooky and wacky!” It felt like whoever had designed the chaotic aesthetic of the whole place was desperately trying to ensnare to coerce the millennial market into coming for a cup of overpriced, overly complicated coffee while taking selfies with their insufferable friends to plaster all over an Instagram feed that no-one in their right mind would give a shit about, regardless of how many cat GIFs and screenshots of the Notes page on their iPhone featuring supposedly profound “showerthoughts” they interspersed their irrepressible narcissism with.

Entertainingly, I got the distinct impression that the staff at Coffee #1 were a little weary of the whole thing, too. The woman serving me wandered off to take a piss (in the toilet, thankfully, at least I assume that’s where she went) halfway through taking my order, and the guy who appeared to be in charge looked a little flustered, to say the least. I’m not sure whether this was simply a side-effect of the Christmas rush (which I can attest to as being exhausting) or if working in an environment that practically screams “ME! ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK HOW QUIRKY I AM!” simply fatigues the mind after a while.

Either way, I’m not averse to going back to Coffee #1 again in the future, since the important part of its service — y’know, the coffee — was nice enough and no more obnoxiously priced than its peers. The mismatched, chaotic decor didn’t even really bother me that much, despite the words I’ve expended describing it above — it was simply rather striking, since it was my first visit. It all just seemed like rather a lot of wasted effort — and believe me, to ensure that every single chair in your establishment doesn’t match any other chair in your establishment has to take a certain amount of effort — when I can’t help but feeling most people would be happy with comfy chairs, muted and relaxing decor, and perhaps some light, calming music playing in the background.

And good coffee, of course.