The recession has put a lot of Seattle-area coffee shops on the market, and one was bought this fall by former banker Steve Cousins.

The old Sip Coffee at 16108 Ash Way in Lynnwood reopened this week as Starling Coffee, a venture that Cousins, who was laid off by Seattle Savings Bank (now Seattle Bank), financed by converting his IRA into a self-directed 401(k). By putting the business inside the 401(k), he avoids the massive tax penalty of withdrawing retirement money early. Sounds like something a banker would know about, eh?

Cousins also did his due diligence at Sip, spending a month hanging out in the cafe and watching how the business worked.

It took about a month to remodel, and Cousins chose Bellevue roaster Kuma Coffee, whose owner, Mark Barany, is among the first in the country to disclose how much he pays for his green coffee beans.

Starling offers Kuma's Red Bear Espresso Blend and a single-source espresso that will rotate each month. This month it's from Ethiopia.

Consultant Sarah Dooley trained Starling's baristas, including Courtney Keane, who's in the photo above taken by Barany.

Coffee Fest's Seattle show opened today and runs through Sunday at the convention center downtown. There are about 300 exhibitors and so far almost 6,000 people registered to attend, organizers said.

The trade show includes lots of coffee beans, syrups and equipment. Here are a few pictures, starting with Zachary Carlsen and Jordan Michelman, who write the mostly indie coffee web site Sprudge.com. When they're not writing hilariously snarky headlines, telling you where the Coffee Fest after-parties are, and reporting on important issues like the questions surrounding a high-scoring entry in this year's Cup of Excellence competition in Colombia, Carlsen works at Four Barrel Coffee in San Francisco, which doesn't allow WiFi and as a result is a boisterous cafe, he said.

"Laptops have killed coffee shops, turned them into libraries," Carlsen said.

"Laptops and smoking bans," added Michelman, a Seattle musician who writes songs and plays guitar in the Mill Kids, and plays sax, keyboards and other instruments for Iji and Megabog.

One of Sprudge.com's sponsors is Espresso Parts in Olympia, which revamps old La Marzocco and other espresso machines. "They're the classic cars of the coffee world," say the Sprudge guys. The Espresso Parts booth had a cool old garage feel:

The booth next door was La Marzocco itself, with a new machine called the Strada. There are two types of Strada -- one that's still in production and this one, the MP, that began shipping a few months ago. The very first MP machine went to Stumptown's newly remodeled store on Division Street in Portland. "It's great," said Stumptown roaster Adam Koehler.

StarbucksGossip.com commenters are arguing about tactics used by the Industrial Workers of the World to organize Starbucks employees, an effort that's been going on for years with mixed success.

The IWW -- the folks who brought us the 8-hour work day -- will not say how many Starbucks workers have joined. It's had legal victories against Starbucks, which IWW organizer James Connolly alludes to at StarbucksGossip.com.

The issue: Some commenters said Starbucks is likely to fire IWW organizer Tyler Swain, an Omaha barista who commented in a Reuters story last week that he has given customers free drinks to boost sales of the instant coffee Via and been coached to encourage others to do the same.

Connolly commented that Starbucks won't fire Swain unless it wants a legal battle.

Now comes the new part, to me anyway: Sleepinggoodtonite asks Connolly, in part, "Do you know your followers are trying to recruit members on company time, and on company property? YOU CAN'T DO THAT. If you're going to try to organize, do it the legal way. Don't try to intimidate people into belonging, don't publish people's cell phone numbers on facebook. Don't have total strangers call the store and demand that union literature be put back up on the bulletin board, quoting a section of the NLRA that doesn't say what you interpret it to say. Don't threaten people!! Do it the right way."

Connolly's come-back, in part: "You are also to be applauded in noticing that we do not have a collective bargaining agreement with Starbucks. This is for a mix of reasons, not the least of which is we haven't reached a critical mass of membership yet within the company. This does not mean, however, that we do not have the right to post union material in stores with a union presence. We've won multiple NLRB cases against the company for taking down union material that we have posted."

He says no one has been threatened or intimidated into joining the IWW and a lot of other things. Check out the rest of the exchange, which has been going for several days.

If we had anything resembling normal weather, it would be time for iced coffee. I'm writing this post anyway, as a sort of incantation that I hope will summon a temperature of at least 65 degrees today.

Baileys Irish Cream teamed with local bartender Zane Harris at Rob Roy and barista Prestin Yoder at Zoka Coffee to create a new twist on Baileys and coffee. Called "The Simple One," it combines 1 ounce Baileys Irish Cream, 3/4 ounces Cognac-based orange liqueur and 3 ounces cold-brewed Zoka Sumatra Permata Gayo. Serve on the rocks with orange-peel garnish.

Cold-brewed coffee is not regular hot coffee poured over ice. It's typically coffee brewed for hours in cold water, per INeedCoffee.com's explainer. This week, former world barista champion James Hoffmann detailed his method, which uses double-strength hot-brewed coffee and a lot of ice. Also thinking it's summer, Sprudge.com posted video of a Chemex method demostrated by barista Katie Carguilo of Counter Culture Coffee in New York, where a person can go sleeveless in July:

Cocktail photo courtesy of Redbox Pictures.

Check out my story on baristas from yesterday's paper, which includes snippets of much longer interviews. In trying to give a decent overview of the profession, I used just a sliver of what I learned from each person.

I don't know the answer to one commenter's question about how baristas might ever make more money. Right now, they make $9 to $10 an hour plus tips, which as Sam Lewontin says at WhyNotCoffee.com, is a starting wage for most food industry jobs and does not reflect the years of training and experience that go into barista work. Some baristas are thinking about other business models for cafes that will be interesting to watch.

Here's a dissection of the story at Sprudge.com, whose Zachary Carlsen I interviewed for the story and who always has something interesting to say.

(The photo by The Seattle Times' Alan Berner is the reflection of barista Andrew Milstead of Urban Coffee Lounge in Kirkland, who's placed high in barista competitions lately.)

Issaquah-based Coffee Fest, which holds coffee trade shows all over the country including an annual show in Seattle each year, is battling the Specialty Coffee Association of America's plan to hold its annual convention in Seattle most years over the next decade.

Coffee Fest has hosted a show in Seattle every year for the past 19. Last fall, its show included the Northwest Barista Competition, which is sponsored by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA).

Now SCAA says Seattle looks like a sweet resting spot. After rotating its big annual shindig among various cities, it's looking to settle here in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018, and possibly 2020 and 2021.

Why's that? The president of the SCAA, Peter Giuliano of Counter Culture Coffee in North Carolina, wrote last night on the group's Facebook page that Seattle (the convention center and visitors bureau) has made an attractive offer that would free up time and resources.

"The way things stand now, there are only a handful of cities that can handle our show (our show is unusual; we need to roast and brew coffee for example, and we need a very high ratio of classroom space for all of our educational classes). Cities like New York, D.C., Chicago and San Francisco aren't well suited for us, are super expensive, and frankly aren't that attracted to our event," he wrote.

Coffee Fest is fighting back. Its social media expert sent a letter alerting SCAA members.

"While Coffee Fest certainly doesn't own Seattle, we do object to the SCAA's plan to all but permanently locate here and expect that given the details and facts, you may object too," reads the letter, which launched a spirited discussion at BaristaExchange.com.

The shows cannot be held together, Coffee Fest founder Alan Silverman wrote in that string.

"The problem is we share many of the same vendors and if we split the revenue neither of us come out in the black. That is actually the crux of the problem. Vendors will have to choose which show they will exhibit in because it does not make sense for them to come to the same city twice a year and two years in a row," Silverman wrote.

There's a fair bit of discussion on Barista Magazine's Facebook page, too.

Despite being the disputed center of the U.S. coffee scene, Seattle does not have monthly latte art throw-downs like Washington, D.C.

But we can watch an ongoing latte art competition at RateMyRosetta.com, where people rate and comment on creations from all over the world.

Here's a crowd admiring the latte pouring skills of Hiroshi Sawada at last fall's Coffee Fest in Seattle:

As if learning to order espresso weren't hard enough -- with grandes here, macchiatos there, and ristretto shots that trip people up -- there can also be mine fields of barista attitude.

Anyone who's had a great shot of espresso knows that baristas are not the same as other front-counter workers. Although some are cocky and secretive about their skills, many want to share what they know about coffee.

Then you come across characters like "Egon," a pseudonym for a Starbucks barista whose disdain for customers is so consuming that he has committed his gripes to the web. Given how much he dislikes discussing coffee, coffee drinks, his company or his customers, perhaps Egon should be flipping burgers, or polishing rocks in a back room where no one will bother him.

Other Starbucks baristas are upsetting Foursquare users who say that baristas have beaten them to online deals. (What is Foursquare? I'll let The Onion take that one.)

Where have you found great baristas willing to chat about coffee and anything else?

A U.S. barista has yet to win the decade-old championship, although Phillips placed third last year, and Heather Perry placed second in 2007.

Seattle hasn't done well lately in U.S. championships, which are being reconfigured so that next year the Northwest region will add baristas from Idaho, Montanta and Wyoming to its current roster from Alaska, Oregon and Washington. The registration fee to compete will also go up an unspecified amount; currently it's $25 to $50.

(If the video isn't working for you here, try this site. Like the U.S. championship stream, it's stop-and-go. Looks like Visions Espresso Service in SoDo is broadcasting it locally.)

Update 6/25/2010: Mike Phillips of Intelligentsia became the first U.S. barista to win the decade-old World Barista Championship.

All the recent talk about Costco wanting to kill the state's monopoly on booze sales has some folks fantasizing about coffee cocktails. They're not a new concept, but there is a new coffee drink debuting at STIFF -- Seattle's True Independent Film Festival -- on Friday evening, created by Alex Negranza, a barista at Trabant Coffee & Chai.

Negranza will use a hand-held espresso maker called a MyPressi Twist to make espresso with Dry Fly vodka instead of water. The cocktail also includes Trabant's hibiscus-jalapeno simple syrup*, cilantro, lime and pomegranate juices. I believe that could relax you and wake you up at the same time. And there's a picture by Negranza with a bag of beans from 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters, which supplies Trabant and this particular cocktail.

He, coffee consultant Sarah Dooley and Trabant owner Mike Gregory also will serve herbal tea gin infusions at:

STIFF 2010 Opening Night Party
Friday, June 4, 2010
8:00 p.m. - 11:30 p.m.
Location: pun(c)tuation, 705A E. Pike St., Seattle, WA

The party is free, but the cocktails are only for badge holders -- and you can buy a badge there for $50, which will get you into all STIFF events through June 13, said festival director Clint Berquist.

* If you can't make it to the party but like the sound of hibiscus-jalapeno syrup, Trabant makes an Italian soda using that syrup at its University District location, where it's experimenting with making syrups in-store and at the moment also has ginger, vanilla made with blue agave and Hawaiian sea salt caramel flavors.

Here's the party:

View pun(c)tuation, site of STIFF party in a larger map

Here's the Trabant location with house-made simple syrups:

View Trabant, University District in a larger map

And here's Trabant's other location, in Pioneer Square:

View Trabant, Pioneer Square in a larger map

It's not the nude beach that Seattleites are clamoring for. In fact, it's not even going to be in Seattle. But it does involve skin and Seattle barista Zachary Carlsen, the co-founder of Sprudge.com who's currently working at Stumptown Coffee's summertime shop in Amsterdam.

When that dream gig ends, Carlsen said he plans to pack his Seattle stuff and move to San Francisco, where he'll scout Castro District locations for a male bikini barista stand he plans to call "Cup of Man." Its Web site will be active soon. I hope there are photos.

"In the beginning, I'll be asking my friends to come visit and do guest barista shifts," Carlsen said in an IM'd interview on Facebook. "My female barista friends must wear fake mustaches. It'll be a cute novelty, but it will be serving the best coffee in San Francisco at the same time."

Watch live video from usbcscaa on Justin.tvWhoever wins this weekend will represent the U.S. at the World Barista Championship in London in June. The U.S. has yet to win the world championship, which last year went to Gwilym Davies, the London barista whose disloyalty card inspired Sarah Dooley to start one in Seattle.

Preliminary competitions begin today for the U.S. Barista Championship, which is part of an annual coffee trade show by the Specialty Coffee Association of America. Justin.tv and Seattle-based Sprudge.com are covering the show, which typically includes great video of latte art and other barista skills. Winners of regional barista competitions get to skip to the semi-finals, which happen on Saturday, and finals are Sunday. The Northwest regional rep this year is Andrew Milstead of Urban Coffee Lounge in Kirkland (also on the disloyalty card, by the way). He actually took second place in the Northwest this year, but top winner Billy Wilson bowed out. Wilson recently opened a shop in Portland called Barista -- or BARISTA -- where the Northwest's third-place winner, Laila Ghambari, works. She used to be at Urban Coffee Lounge in Kirkland and is competing in Anaheim, too.

Other folks at the coffee show include Seattle-based (but Italy-made) equipment maker La Marzocco, which will let baristas try out its Strada espresso machine, which has not officially launched. The Strada lets baristas adjust water pressure, which sounds like the Seattle-based Slayer to me, but I'll do a longer post later explaining differences.

Coffee Kids, a non-profit based in Santa Fe that works to help coffee-growing families, is holding a contest you can enter online until 5 p.m. Saturday. Entry comes with a donation, and first prize is a Behmor 1600 one-pound coffee roaster donated by Behmor, of Nevada, plus a Mypressi Handheld Espresso Machine -- also known as the Twist from Mypressi -- and $25 worth of free coffee from Visions Espresso Service of Seattle. That's where Sarah Dooley (of the disloyalty card) used to work. Sometimes you need a flow chart to grock the coffee connections.

Update: That video stream is spotty. It cut out this morning just as Ghambari was about to compete. An alternative is Twitter -- folks following it listed here -- although no one appears to be tweeting this morning's event.

Update Sunday: Mike Phillips of Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea -- the guy who paid his own way to last year's U.S. Barista Championship in Portland -- won the U.S. title today for the second year in a row. Three of the six finalists were from Chicago-based Intelligentsia, which resembles the Yankees a lot more than its hometown Cubs.

Local coffee dynamo Sarah Dooley has launched a disloyalty card to encourage Seattleites to try lots of different coffees around town. Modeled after a similar card that barista champion Gwilym Davies started in London last year, it offers a free beverage at the participating cafe of your choice after you've had a drink at each of the 10 coffeehouses on the card (which together have 13 locations, mostly in Seattle).

The cafes expect to start distributing cards in the next few days, said Dooley, who recently left Visions Espresso Service to be a coffee consultant. The cards, which expire in December 2012, were designed by Dan Baumfeld at Neptune Coffee. Printing was paid for by Equal Exchange Espresso.

Update 9:35 a.m., 4/14/2010: In response to comments on this post, Sarah Dooley e-mailed to say, "We took the first ten that replied with a solid YES." Having a "competition level" standard of beverages was a driving factor, and, "We said NO, very respectfully to a few companies." Dooley said a few companies she would have loved to see on the card were non-responsive.

A few things I didn't post while sneezing my head off this week:

• Remember that rooibos espresso I mentioned a while back? Inner Chapters Bookstore & Cafe in South Lake Union/Cascade ordered some, and they're using it to make everything from Mexican mochas to soy cappuccinos with honey and cinnamon, and -- if you even remotely like tea -- the stuff is tasty.
• "The current state of specialty coffee retailing bugs the hell out of me," coffee veteran Kevin Knox writes on his blog, Caffeinated Calm. Knox was in charge of coffee quality for Starbucks from 1987 to 1993, then a coffee buyer for Allegro Coffee in Boulder, Colo. The post includes great historical notes, like how appalled George Howell was at Starbucks' dark roasts during a Seattle visit in 1990, but mostly it's a criticism of the too-cool-for-you coffee community. "What I see in the coffee offerings of most of the so-called 'third wave' roasters is an approach to retailing that at its worst is both solipsistic and narcissistic," he writes.
• Coffee consultant Sarah Dooley e-mailed to say that Rosettas for Relief, a latte art competition last month to benefit Haiti, raised $2,375.97 in Seattle. Andrew Milstead of the Urban Coffee Lounge had the winning pour.
• Starbucks spent $740,000 lobbying in Washington, D.C., last year, according to OpenSecrets.org. One person, Lori Otto, did most of the work, but a cadre of lobbyists at K&L Gates also pitched in. About $190,000 was spent in the fourth quarter on foreign trade, corporate accounting issues and other matters, according to a report filed with the House clerk's office, AP said.
• If the charms of Facebook, Twitter and your Android phone lose their luster, check out what the marketing wizards at Foursquare have cooked up: It's a partnership with Starbucks that gives customers -- free coffee? free Wi-Fi? No! A barista badge, whatever that is. The New York Times blogged about the arrangement, which goes beyond letting the world know what you had for breakfast and how it's sitting. With Foursquare, you can broadcast where you are, and get a barista badge after "checking in" at five separate Starbucks shops. Frequent customers will get rewards, Starbucks' Chris Bruzzo told the Times, but it might be something "more meaningful" than free coffee -- like invitations to special events, photo sharing or online reputation scores.
• The New York Times also wrote a nice piece on efforts by Counter Culture and other roasters to bring better flavor to decaffeinated coffee.
• "The KICK of coffee without the cup!" is the promise from Le Whif, a new coffee from Paris that you inhale rather than drink, the Chicago Tribune reported. To be clear, you breathe Le Whif through your mouth, so it's not cheap cocaine. The brainchild of a Harvard professor, it debuted in New York and Cambridge, Mass., this week.

• The Tribune also reported that Costco is no longer roasting coffee at one of its Chicago locations. Who knew they roasted anywhere?
• Someone drove from London to Manchester -- almost 200 miles -- in a car powered by coffee beans.
• Because of the name, I feel like I should mention that it's Coffee Party weekend. On Saturday, thousands of people around the country will gather at coffeehouses and other locations to craft an alternative to the Tea Party movement -- or a lot of alternatives. At the Coffee Party web site, you can plug in your zip code and find a meeting nearby. Looks like events are planned at Cafe Allegro in the University District, near Urban Coffee Lounge in Kirkland and at Starbucks' Roy Street Coffee and Tea on Capitol Hill.
• Many thanks to Seattle Times content director Cory Haik for the photo capturing the feisty cup message from Short Stop Coffee in Ballard.

When one of my best coffee sources suggested looking into the dearth of espresso carts in Seattle, I called the Seattle Department of Transportation, which lists just three active permits for sidewalk coffee carts in the whole city.

When I went to visit the carts, the one outside Men's Wearhouse was closed for the winter and the Nordstrom's cart was gone altogether.

Only the cart outside 14 Carrot Cafe on Eastlake Avenue remains year-round. Bridget Collins, a barista there who recently moved from Minnesota, summed up the situation: "It's not minus-20 and snowing here," she said. "I was surprised, considering you can't shake a stick in Seattle without hitting three Starbucks and two independent coffee roasters."

There are more sidewalk carts in the Twin Cities, said Collins (with customer Everette Hungerford in the top photo, by The Seattle Times' Erika Schultz).

I'm not talking about kiosks in malls and building lobbies, or the occasional cart on private property, like the one outside REI's flagship store downtown. I mean the espresso carts on sidewalks that used to be a Seattle tradition.

The full story includes interviews with -- among others -- David Schomer, whose venerable Espresso Vivace started as a cart; Dave Stewart, former cart owner and co-founder of Seattle's Best Coffee; and Chuck Beek, who owns Monorail Espresso, which was the city's -- and probably the country's -- first cart.

Beek is pictured in the second photo (also by Erika Schultz) inside the walk-up window that Monorail Espresso became 14 years ago. Bottom photo is the Monorail cart in the early '80s, courtesy of the Seattle Department of Transportation.

Below that is a video of the last year-round coffee cart on a Seattle sidewalk, outside the 14 Carrot Cafe on Eastlake.

The upshot seems to be that coffeehouses and regulations put the carts out of business. What do you think?

That beautiful heart was the winning pour by Andrew Milstead at Saturday evening's barista fundraiser for Haiti. Milstead, who works at the Urban Coffee Lounge in Kirkland, was last year's latte art champion at Coffee Fest Seattle.

This past weekend's event was part of a 10-city effort called Rosettas for Relief that is raising money for REBATI, a nonprofit organized to send counselors and other mental health professionals to help survivors of the earthquakes in Haiti.

Eleven Seattle-area baristas raised and donated almost $2,000 in order to compete at the Coffee Enhancement Lounge in SoDo, according to barista Alex Negranza, who wrote about the event -- and its impressively long list of sponsors -- at WhyNot?Coffee.com.

Money is still coming in, according to Sarah Dooley, one of the event's organizers, who created the CEL and is now an independent coffee consultant.

(Photo courtesy of Andrew Milstead and Sarah Dooley)

It's hard to believe that Sarah Dooley, who started the Coffee Enhancement Lounge last year, is leaving to be an independent coffee consultant. "I will use the CEL and cafes as training facilities," she said in an e-mail.

But first, she and Daniel Humphries are putting together a fundraiser at the CEL for Saturday at 7 p.m., part of a 10-city effort called Rosettas for Relief that's raising money for REBATI, a nonprofit that sends counselors and other mental health professionals to help survivors in Haiti.

The event is a latte art competition, always lively in Seattle. Each barista will donate and/or raise $100 to compete, and the top three contenders from each city will compete in a national final to be judged using Flickr.

"Baristas from all over the city will be there to pour some lattes, talk some trash, have a lot of fun, and raise some money for a great cause. We have some pretty cool prizes for the winners, too!" according to the official flier.

To sign up, e-mail Dooley at sarah@visionsespresso.com or Humphries at daniel@coffeescholars.com.

They're looking for sponsors, too. So far, they have 25 gallons of milk from Sunshine Dairy and DJ'ing from Visions sales manager Klif Borja.

The CEL is at Visions Espresso Service, 2737 First Ave. S.:

View Untitled in a larger map

Taking the holiday to wrap up loose ends, like:

• The New York Times calls the Seattle-built Slayer espresso machine charismatic and beautiful.


• A reader wants to know where she can find a cup -- not a pound -- of Kona coffee around here. Anyone know?


• Mighty-O Donuts hosts free tours on Thursday and Friday (Feb. 18 and 19) at 10 a.m. Sign up at 2110 N. 55th Street (where the tours are), or 206-547-0335, or info@mightyo.com.


• Lincoln Graham represents Seattle with his photo of a Caffe Ladro barista reflected in an espresso machine at PictoryMag.com (scroll to No. 20).


• Sarah Gilbert at Daily Finance considers how blending coffee and turning up the roaster can save money and hurt flavor.


• Starbucks draws attention from the research firm Morningstar, which gave its debt an A-, and TheStreet.com, which says its stock is overpriced.


• A Starbucks customer with Tourette's syndrome sues for alleged discrimination after an outburst, The Palm Beach Post reports.


• And someone actually writes a blog about putting weird things in coffee -- eggs, curry, salmon cream cheese. There are photos.

While I'm away, Bryant Simon will read from his book, "Everything But the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks," at Elliott Bay Book Co. on Thursday, Jan. 14. And the Food Network will air a show about "black and white delights" on Jan. 18, 19 and 27 that includes footage of latte art being poured at Seattle Barista Academy. Show times vary.

More fun reading:

• The online copy of CoffeeTalk's 2010 State of the Industry.


• Rooibos tea espresso? Seriously.


• Also Java-Log, firewood made from coffee grounds.


• A pretty cool graphic with coffee basics, including the often-quoted "fact" that coffee is the world's most-traded commodity after oil. I'm still trying to get a commodities exchange to confirm.


• Even cooler graphic comparing the size of a coffee bean to a red blood cell, viruses and other tiny things.


• For the Starbucks crowd, check out this comparison of Starbucks wages from baristas to store managers to software engineers to.... well, it suddenly refused to share more unless I anonymously posted a Starbucks salary.


• Internationally, there's a 2005 photo making the Twitter rounds of a Starbucks in Dubai, and customers in South Korea are griping about a Starbucks price hike.

An article in this week's East Bay Express examines the essence of "third-wave coffee," a term coined around 2002 that aims to define an evolved coffee scene in which baristas, roasters and farmers know each other and are connoisseurs of a product to which they're all passionately connected.

"At a cafe purporting to be third wave, the barista can tell you not only what country a particular coffee is from, but in many cases even the specific farm or plot of land," writes Luke Tsai. The third waves also tends to prefer light or medium roasts, "as opposed to the darker roasting style popularized by Peet's and Starbucks."

Some people find third-wave coffee intimidating, and Tsai describes tussles with customers over iced coffee and confusion about what "macchiato" means now that Starbucks has tried to redefine it as a caramel latte.

Others find the third wave arrogant, including Greg Sherwin of CoffeeRatings.com, who recently promised to limit his third-wave mockery to one post a week.

"Step into a family-owned operation in Italy that has made pretty damn good espresso for the past half century -- noting their attention to detail and quality controls in their operations -- and the concept of this 'third-wave' business being new suddenly seems a bit absurd," Sherwin wrote to Tsai in a recent e-mail.

Even James Freeman, who started Blue Bottle Coffee in 2002 and is considered a leader of the movement in the Bay Area, told Tsai he doesn't like the third-wave label.

"For Freeman and, one suspects, for most folks who have dedicated their lives to making coffee in what they believe to be the right way, it still comes down to the simple pursuit, at the start each day, for that one delicious, perfectly satisfying cup -- a cup that, even for a skilled barista like Freeman, might take three or four tries to get exactly right," Tsai writes.

Kirkland baristas Andrew Milstead and Laila Ghambari trained 12 to 15 hours a day for weeks before Coffee Fest Seattle, Milstead tells the Kirkland Reporter in a fun look at them and the supportive owner of Urban Coffee Lounge, where they work.

"This was an intense process that took many hours of their own unpaid time and money just because they love it and want to be the best," owner Alicia Miner told the Reporter.

Milstead ranked first in the latte art competition, and he and Ghambari were second and third in a broader competition whose first-place winner -- Billy Wilson of Barista in Portland -- gets a shot at competing in the U.S. Barista Championship.

That's the word at StarbucksGossip.com, where baristas all over the country are talking about what's happening this week as Starbucks rolls out instant coffee in the U.S. and Canada.

And why not, with a national ad campaign behind it, Howard Schultz talking to Maria Bartiromo about it, and Jim Cramer taste testing it? Schultz has called Via "perhaps the biggest opportunity our company has ever had."

StarbucksGossip.com posts indicate mixed customer responses. Some folks love it, and some stores are making their quotas. Baristas in less fortunate stores are sharing scary stories like these:

"The work environment seems to be becoming more hostile toward SMs [store managers] from above to meet sales goals and they have to, of course, do the same to their store teams. I've never heard the threats of 'corrective actions' in the years I've worked for Starbucks as I have now."

"We are being THREATENED into selling VIA.....and it's scary. Because we didn't make goal today, our Regional and District Manager will be in our store in the morning to see what's wrong."

StarbucksGossip.com webmaster Jim Romenesko says he'll "pay $100 to a store manager who gets a 'corrective action' call from an RDO (whatever that is) and tells him/her to 'go f-- yourself.' (Tape of call and name of RDO required for payment. Only two 'prizes' will be awarded. Sorry, I'm not rich.)"

Alas.

At the smackdown at Victrola Coffee (E. Pike) on Saturday night, ten of Seattle's best baristas lost in both the cumulative score (1,072 to 1,249) and the our-best-against-their-best categories.

Our best on Saturday night was Laila Ghambari of Urban Coffee Lounge in Kirkland; theirs was Phil Kim of Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea of Chicago (but in his case, L.A.), a company that has been cleaning up in barista competitions. Ghambari also competed the next day in the Specialty Coffee Association of America's regional barista contest and won third place.

Before the smackdown started, I took this shot (right) of contender Stephen Robinson of Victrola Coffee (15th Ave. E.) practicing with the help of Stumptown barista Liz Phung. Victrola's barista trainer, Mark Pfaff, said he liked seeing Seattle's coffeehouses come together for the event and that it'll happen again next year.

Meanwhile, if you're all coffeed out, get ready for this weekend's Northwest Tea Festival.

As you can see, I wasn't the only one taking pictures of the jaw-dropping latte art at this morning's qualifier for tomorrow's final round at Coffee Fest.

After the judges have a gander, the art shows up for attendees to marvel over until the foam slowly overtakes the espresso and the next round of cups arrive.

The tulip surrounded by two rosettas (below left) was poured by Philip Hong of Caffe Artigiano in Vancouver, B.C., while Billy Idol's "White Wedding" played on loudspeakers.

Last year's winner, Hiroshi Sawada of Tokyo, poured five rosettas (below right), a feat that I'd suggest pushes the boundaries of latte art into just plain showing off if he weren't such a cool guy.

Emcee Heather Perry said Sawada donated his cash award last year to Coffee Kids, and he's made a beautiful book of latte art with pictures and instructions (in Japanese) for pouring.

"Investigators saw the women expose their crotches, lick whipped cream off their co-workers' private parts and pose naked for pictures inside the Grab-n-Go Espresso stand on Broadway," The Everett Herald reports.

Detectives also saw some of them charge customers to touch their bare breasts and buttocks, which falls under the city's definition of prostitution.

Here's another event for the coffee dance card this weekend:

Sarah Dooley, who created the new Coffee Enhancement Lounge at Visions Espresso Service, wrote to say it's hosting a meet and greet from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. on Friday.

It's open to the public, and the CEL and the Barista Guild of America hope to bring together competitors from the Northwest Regional Barista Competition, which will be held during Coffee Fest this weekend.

If they're not too tired from competing that afternoon, baristas will pull shots using the Aurelia, an espresso machine by Nuova Simonelli, and a Malhkonig grinder.

The gathering is at 2737 1st Ave. S. in Seattle:

View Coffee Enhancement Lounge in a larger map

This weekend, while some of us were soaking in the great outdoors, a handful of coffee devotees holed up at a new barista training ground in SoDo, pulling shot after shot of espresso.

Among them was August (top photo), who goes by one name and is head barista at Coffee to a Tea, home of Sugar Rush Baking in West Seattle.

Instructor Jared Mockli of Bellissimo Coffee InfoGroup put him and his classmates through the paces, pulling and tasting espresso with increasingly darker roasts. Mockli used to work for Bellissimo's headquarters office in Portland and now teaches for them in Seattle, where he also works on Starbucks' new 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea shop.

The classroom space -- called the Coffee Enhancement Lounge -- was put together over the past few months by Sarah Dooley, who started her coffee career as a Starbucks barista when she was 18 and has since owned her own coffee shop (Java & More in Federal Way) and been a retail manager and lead trainer for Caffe D'Arte in Georgetown.

Now she's created the CEL at Visions Espresso Service, a coffee equipment company just south of Starbucks' headquarters (see the mermaid to the right of Visions in the bottom photo). The CEL is filled with grinders, espresso machines and cupping tables, and was used to train baristas for Starbucks' new 15th Ave. venture.

It's also given Bellissimo a place near Seattle to hold classes, and Dooley hopes will attract more classes and events for baristas and other coffee aficionados.

View Coffee Enhancement Lounge in a larger map

In my post last week about the new Zoka in Kirkland (which, by the way, I hear did not open today as planned), I wrote that "coffee connoisseurs say Zoka Coffee Roaster & Tea Co. coined the term" Third Wave, based on a 2008 Bean Chaser post that referred to Trish Skeie of Zoka.

This morning, I heard from Trish Rothgeb (formerly Skeie), who was Zoka's green coffee buyer and roaster until two years ago. She said she wrote about the Third Wave while working at a roasting company called Mocca in Oslo, Norway. Her first article about the Third Wave appeared in the December 2002 issue of The Flamekeeper, a newsletter from the roasters guild of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. (Someone reposted it at Coffeed.com, where debate raged about Third Wave hubris versus good coffee.)

Rothgeb said Tim Castle, a green coffee importer, wrote about it around the same time for a magazine called Tea & Coffee Asia.

These days, Rothgeb teaches coffee cupping standards all over the world for the Coffee Quality Institute, plus domestic classes for Coffee Lab International in Vermont.

A California appeals court has overturned last year's $86 million decision against Starbucks, saying the company did not violate state law by allowing shift supervisors to share tips with baristas.

Starbucks policy requires baristas to share money in tip jars with shift supervisors, who mentor and coach them.

Last year's ruling by San Diego County Superior Court Judge Patricia Yim Cowett ordered the company to discontinue its tip-pooling policy and pay damages to more than 100,000 Starbucks baristas.

A three-judge panel with the California Court of Appeal said in a ruling filed today that the law does not prohibit an employer from dividing tips placed in a "collection box" among employees who provided service.

The ruling "validates our longstanding tip policy, which ensures that both baristas and shift leads - the hourly [employees] in every Starbucks store - receive a fair share of the tips," Starbucks said in a written statement.

David Lowe, an attorney who represents plaintiffs, said they consider the ruling to be a "temporary setback" and now will look to the Supreme Court of California. "The Court of Appeal clearly erred, and misinterpreted the law in reversing the trial court's decision," he said.

The original lawsuit was filed in October 2004 by a San Diego barista who no longer works for Starbucks. The suit gained class-action status in 2006.

In that case, plaintiffs argued that shift supervisors are "agents" of the company under California law because they "supervise and direct" baristas' work, and therefore can't share in the same tip pool.

Starbucks disagreed, saying shift supervisors have no managerial authority. Store managers, who do not share tips, set employees' work hours and make other personnel decisions.

Here's the appeal court's full ruling.

Starbucks signed a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board last week agreeing to let Minneapolis-area employees post union materials in their break areas and discuss union issues while on the job, as long as it doesn't interfere with their performance.

The settlement does not include financial payment, and it will not be final until the NLRB decides whether to address objections to the settlement by union organizers at the Industrial Workers of the World, according to Marlin Osthus, acting director of the NLRB's upper midwest region office.

The IWW initiated the complaints that led to the settlement and, according to a press release, considers it a victory at this point.

It's Starbucks' sixth labor settlement in three years and its second in Minneapolis. In December, the coffee chain also lost a battle in administrative-law court when a judge determined that Starbucks had unfairly imposed work rules on employees who supported the IWW.

The company is appealing the court's decision and has not acknowledged wrongdoing in any of the settlements.

Starbucks said in a statement that since early January, 15 unfair labor practice charges filed by a "small group of individuals" have been dismissed by the NLRB or withdrawn.

"Starbucks chose to settle the one remaining charge," the statement said. It called the settlement "the latest in the IWW's 'kitchen sink' approach to criticizing all things Starbucks.... [W]e strongly believe we would have prevailed had the one remaining case gone to trial, but the time and expense required to do so was not justifiable."

Starbucks' labor record is the subject of a new online film by Brave New Films, which is known for viral video campaigns against John McCain, Wal-Mart and others.

So far the Starbucks video, which features tales told before by union activists (and which I covered here and here), has been viewed 60,599 times on YouTube. According to a site that supports the film, a form letter to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz decrying Starbucks' union stance -- including its recent decision to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act -- has been sent by 14,845 people.

JAMES HOLK PHOTOGRAPHY

Running short on hot news tips today, I thought I'd share this excellent party photo from the '80s-themed Barista Prom a couple months ago in Portland. The prom attracted more than 650 revelers and was sponsored by BaristaExchange.com and Albina Press while Portland hosted the U.S. Barista Championship.

Here's a rundown:
Matt Milletto (upper left) -- runs Barista Exchange and director of training for the American Barista & Coffee School
Kylene Milletto (in front of him) -- Matt's wife
Bruce Milletto (peace sign) -- Matt's dad and president of Bellissimo Coffee InfoGroup Consulting Services
Ginger Gerhart (by Bruce) -- Of Gourmet Source in Portland, which sells chocolate and other coffee condiments
Alden Oakleigh Gerhart Kelley (lower left) -- Ginger's son points right at us

And the Washington-related contingent:
Anna Gutierrez (turquoise dress, center) -- Dillanos Coffee Roasters in Sumner, Washington
Bronwen Serna (next to her) -- Seattleite who was the 2004 U.S. Barista Champion and now works for Hines Public Market in Vancouver, B.C.
Kevin Kopke (behind Bronwen) -- Also from Dillanos.
Kyle Rees (spiky hair, lower right) -- Another Dillanos rep.
Stephen Vick (brown jacket, sliding in front) -- Former Zoka Coffee barista who now works for the green coffee importer Sustainable Harvest in Portland

If the unicorns and looks of glee aren't enough to make you jealous, get this: The evening's entertainment featured Voodoo Doughnut co-owner Tres Shannon in an audience-participation band called "Karaoke From Hell."

Go here for the full gallery of nealry 300 photos (don't miss the candids at the bottom).

It was off air when I checked, but the multi-language chatter indicates someone's watching. You can even set up a pop-up window so you won't miss a minute. It's all here.

Beginning today, you can pick up Starbucks' latest book suggestion -- a divorce memoir called "Happens Every Day" by actress Isabel Gillies -- at more than 7,000 stores nationwide.

Or you can wait for the April 10 publication of a more coffee-centric read with pictures, "Tall Skinny Bitter: Notes from the Center of Coffee Culture," by Dani Cone, who owns Fuel Coffee and High 5 Pie, and Seattle graphic designer Chris Munson. (Sasquatch Books, $16.95)

"Tall Skinny Bitter" features some of the best-known names in Seattle coffee, from All City to Zoka, and several big Portland names.

Before she started working crazy hours, beginning with pie baking at 4:30 a.m., Cone spent a lot of time hanging out in coffeehouses. "I don't have one favorite," she says. "It depends on my mood and what part of town I feel like going to."

I wondered about the book's title, because I don't think of Dani as bitter. But it's there if you dig. Take this list from the book:

MELISSA ALLISON/THE SEATTLE TIMES

Dani Cone: Coffee shop owner, pie baker, author.

Top 5 Things Customers Say That Make Baristas Want to Punch Them in the Face

1. Happy Friday!!!
2. Why are you yawning? Don't you know you work in a coffee shop?
3. Barista: How's it going?
Customer: Tall mocha.
4. Can I have a caramel macchiato?
5. Really? This is all you do? I assumed you did something else with your free time.

(I know. I still have to do that post on the Italian versus Starbucks macchiato.)

Here's where you can find Fuel Coffee and High 5 Pies (the book will also be in bookstores):

View Larger Map

A river hydraulics engineer in Renton is taking coffee art into a new genre.

Brad Singley doesn't make hearts and rosettas with latte foam. In his spare time, the married father of two plays with flash animation.

He has created "Mista Barista," a uniquely Northwest superhero saving our forests, power lines and Space Needle from the destruction of Lumberjerk, Dungeness and Roboctopus. The three-minute animation is in two parts, here (1) and here (2).

"I've never even tasted coffee," Singley freely admits. "I went to school in Utah, so it was a bit of a culture shock to see how much of daily life revolves around coffee here."

He came up with Mista Barista to compete in a Puget Sound superhero animation contest being held by KSTW and the Art Institute of Seattle. At one point, he was torn between drawing Mista Barista or Sista Barista, "a crime-fighting nun who works at a coffee kiosk on the weekend."

Go here to vote for Mista Barista and see its superhero competition. The grand prize is a $3,000 scholarship toward enrollment at the Art Institute, an Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection, and being featured in a promotional spot created by KSTW-CW11.

The contest was "a great excuse to use the other half of my brain for a change," Singley said in an e-mail. "I never got a chance to take an art class (too much math), so I'm hoping to win this competition so I can take a few classes at the Art Institute of Seattle."

That depressing nugget is the kicker on Drew DeSilver and Amy Martinez's report today on Washington's frighteningly high unemployment rate (8.4 percent).

In the article, Krystyna Frahm, who manages Mokas Cafe & Coffee Bar in South Lake Union, said the most resumes she received in the past was 50 for a full-time job.

What are unemployed baristas doing to pay the rent? Is it too much to hope that some will start new coffeehouses?

... alas, no one from Seattle.

Mike Phillips from Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea in Chicago earned the 2009 U.S. barista champion title today and will represent the U.S. at the world championships in Atlanta next month.

Second, fourth and fifth places went to baristas from Intelligentsia, which also brought us last year's champion, Kyle Glanville, from Intelligentsia in Los Angeles.

Here are the other top winners from this weekend's competition:

2nd Place: Nick Griffith, Intelligentsia in Los Angeles
3rd Place: Scott Lucey, Alterra Coffee in Milwaukee
4th Place: Ryan Willbur, Intelligentsia in Los Angeles
5th Place: Devin Pedde, Intelligentsia in Los Angeles
6th Place: Mike Marquard, Kaldi's Coffee in St. Louis

GREG GILBERT/THE SEATTLE TIMES

Phuong Tran competing in the 2005 U.S. Barista Championship, which she won with her signature drink, Crimson Sage (espresso with sugar-cane juice, sage-infused milk and white pepper).

Bronwen Serna and Phuong Tran were the toast of the Seattle coffee community when they won in 2004 and 2005, respectively.

Sema worked at Hines Public Market Coffee on Eastlake Avenue, which is now sadly closed. Tran owned Lava Java in Ridgefield and worked for Zoka Coffee Roaster & Tea Co. in Seattle, and later went to work at Hines Public Market.

This weekend, two Seattle baristas are competing -- Robbie Britt and Brett Walker, both of Zoka Coffee.

Look here for photos and video footage of what's happening in Portland.

To appreciate how intense this competition is, check out the judge's score sheets on everything from "visually correct cappuccino" to "acceptable milk waste at end."

The winner -- announced Sunday -- will represent the U.S. at the 2009 World Barista Championship in Atlanta next month. The championships are hosted by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

Kevin Emmons of Caffe D'Arte in Portland traveled to the Midwest last weekend to show off his latte art skills at Coffee Fest Chicago, where he won top prize with the increasingly popular tulip design.

Emmons thought he could have done better, he told the Chicago Tribune. "My hand was shaky and at my shop I think I do better."

Other top foam shapers were second-place Justin Teisl from Four Barrel Coffee in San Francisco and third-place Jonathan Jarrow of The Brothers K Coffeehouse in Evanston, Ill.

From Seattle, Christopher Alameda of Espresso Vivace, whose co-owner David Schomer wrote the book on latte art, came in fifth. Alex Negranza from Visions Espresso Service in Seattle also competed.

Bellevue-based Coffee Fest holds several latte art contests a year and should not to be confused with the more intense U.S. Barista Championship coming up in Portland on March 5 to 8. Sponsored by the Specialty Coffee Association of America, it judges on an variety of skills, including signature espresso drinks that baristas serve to judges with a panache typically found in sommeliers.

Coffee Fest judges receive no such treatment, nor does their casual style suggest they should. Check out these cool cats at Coffee Fest Seattle, 2007:

PHOTO: KEN LAMBERT/THE SEATTLE TIMES
Sarah Allen, Henry Patterson and Chris Deferio wear headphones with music piped in at Coffee Fest's Millrock Latte Art Competition.