Overcaffeination in Mission Dolores

Maxfield's abuts Mission High School. We remember drinking coffee in high school. We liked it, but weren't yet addicted. That happened when we were forced to get to the office at 6 a.m., in our mid-20s.

Your Trimethyldioxypurist can't help but feel that too much caffeine in high school would be a bad thing.

There was a woman in the corner that kept staring at us. Strange. She was trying to be coy about looking in our direction. Can't tell you why -- perhaps our hair was a fright or something.

We continued to sip our coffee -- we started with a drip here at Maxfield's. We found it to be a bit tinny, metallic. As we were writing this, the woman behind the counter started looking at us too -- more like a glare. Microcameras embedded in the chairs, transmitting our negative thoughts? It's all we could think of. Unless we forgot to shower. We weren't sure.

While being glared or stared at from two different directions, we did our best to avoid eye contact with anybody. We stared at the chalkboard menu. Fixated on the words "peanut butter."

Noteworthy: Maxfield's was playing music at a perfect volume. We weren't familiar with it (seemed pleasant enough), but thanks to excellent volume control, we weren't forced to become more intimate.

Man, that quiche looked good. We recall some phrase about "real men don't eat quiche . . ." hah! If we had an extra five bucks, we'd have eaten some. "Poor men don't eat quiche" is more like it.

We were rudderless. The coffee was passable at first. But that metal taste was bothering us more and more. We couldn't stand the thought of another drink. Time to leave.

Suddenly, we're Jeffy and this is a Family Circus comic. Draw that dotted line. We're walking.

C'mon. You get the references. Don't lie. You know you love the ones where we follow the children on a path around town.

A few blocks away, we pass Cafe Macondo -- except it's not anymore. No clear signage. Got some construction going on. Oh, and a liquor license application on the window. Beer and wine? Looks like it. We pop in, hoping to ask what the new name is, when the revamps will be done. But people are staring again. Why? We don't want to talk to anyone. Then we see the damned color-chalk menu. We are forced to leave.

We're disappointed. Change is disappointing; sameness is also disappointing. Losing distinction is disappointing.

Reminds us: Starbucks owns Seattle's Best, who owns Torrefazione, which is--or was--our favorite "mass market" coffee place. SBUX is closing them down, announced last week. Score another victory for coffee clone-ism. Coffee colonialism.

Sometimes, we feel like we may as well be talking about gas stations. After all, what kind of idiot goes more than a few minutes out of his way for coffee?

Besides us, of course. We are that idiot.

Speaking of idiot, we should have eaten that quiche. Instead, we ended up at Pakwan (16th and Guerrero), eating something more expensive than the quiche was, though it was hot, spicy, full of goat, and came with naan. And was awesome. We're not disappointed, just foolish with our pocket money sometimes.

But, seriously, "hot, spicy and full of goat" is about as far removed from coffee as you can get. Well, except that goats were responsible for finding coffee beans, according to legend. (More on this in a later piece.)

Neighborhood places can be great, sure--a lot of it depends on the clientele and spirit of the hood. But we can't do reviews this way anymore--just going out and getting coffee somewhere. It's got to be special. It's got to be noteworthy. It's got to challenge us -- we just can't go to the "color-chalk menu places."

So we won't. Coffee of distinction, one way or the other, from here on out, folks. We promise.

So, next time, a contest. Editrix Eve is going to help us out with so-called "coding"--welcome to the '90s, Mr. Trimeth. You can win stuff. Coffee stuff. Same bat-time, same bat-url.