Hey, have you seen all those annoying "Let's meet at Starbucks" adverts? Quite irritating.

Well, SBUX is indeed bringing folks together -- in a way they may not be too happy about. Many businesses and residents in the Inner Richmond are protesting an invasion by one of Starbuck's nigh ubiquitous stores via petition.

Bryan, one of the lead anti-Starbuckians, has a blog, stoprichmondstarbucks.blogspot.com, with many of the details.

He says to us in an email that:

"The Board of Supervisors for San Francisco has agreed to hear our appeal to the Planning Commision's decision to allow a Starbucks into the neighborhood. It was not hard to convince them that their was significant neighborhood opposition when Jesse Fink (the owner of Toyboat Desert Shop) walked into City Hall on July 9th with over 1,000 signatures in protest. We filed our appeal on the 11th and AUGUST 7th at 4:30 PM there will be a hearing to decide whether or not to overrule the Planning Commission's decision. The Board of Supervisors will
decide whether or not another Starbucks move into the Richmond."

He suggests that if you agree with his position, you can sign the petition at one of the following places: Toy Boat (5th and Clement); JavaHolics (6th and Balboa); Q (Clement betw. 3rd and 4th); Blue Danube Cafe (Clement near 4th); Green Apple Bookstore (Clement betw. 6th and
7th); Cafe Velo Rouge (Arguello at McAllister); Cafe du Sol (Lake near 6th); or Cafe Muse (8th near Fulton). He also says that if you would really like to help call you should your supervisor and let them know what you think. Finally, it seems that anyone that wants to can speak for three minutes at the Aug. 7 meeting -- so, if you care to, let your voice be heard!

(But if you're going to do so in a song parody, please make sure you film it, put it on YouTube, and send a link to SFist, thanks. Maybe something to the Hollies "Bus Stop?" "Starbucks, Starbucks, please stay a-way from the Inner Riiiiich-mond . . .").

True story from a crowded J-Church this morning. We were sitting quietly, a little zoned out, holding the 20 oz. cup of coffee that we'd obtained at our neighborhood cafe with both of our hands, which had become rather cold from time outside. Yes, we had a lid on it.

The J-Church, particularly when it's on the streets heading from Dolores Park up to Market St., is a little herky-jerky. One well-known hazard faced by regular MUNI riders (whether bus or street car): you take a risk if you stand or try to move in advance of the vehicle actually coming to a complete stop. Chances are good you might take a dive if you try it. Hasn't this happened to most of us at one time or another? We recall a particularly embarrassing tumble on the 1 California a number of years ago.

And, yeah, we'll admit carrying a coffee on your morning commute is a calculated risk as well.

So, here's what happened: a woman, perhaps a relative MUNI noob, tried to shuffle closer to the exit door while the car was still in motion, just as it did one of its back-and-forth jerking things. She went flying into the woman sitting next to us, who bravely bore the brunt of the impact -- but then the tumbler continued her descent and knocked against our shoulder and arms, finally balancing herself against our torso. Oops!

We've seen some hideous examples of what can happen when a product attempts to combine several things into one. We've also seen some pretty good examples.

Well, now there's a pretty stellar one: Mateveza Yerba Maté Ale, a pale ale enhanced by maté, a South American tea that is known for its health and energy benefits.

Jim Woods -- the beer's creator, and long-time Bay Area resident (grew up in Lafayette; currently a San Franciscan) -- stressed that while the maté's extra effects may add an interesting twist to his product, that's not the beer's main selling point. Rather, it's all about the taste.

And that, in our opinion, is why it works so well.

Perhaps it helps that Jim's love of maté is a healthy one--he enjoys it in moderation. This undoubtedly helped him in developing the formula for Mateveza, which was the most challenging stage of the process. How much should the yerba maté shine through, in terms of flavor or effect? How much maté should he add to get to that level? At what point in the brewing process should it be incorporated?

Using his network of friends as a focus group was a great help and very much in the spirit of yerba maté. Consuming maté in its traditional form -- it's passed around in a gourd filled with loose leaves, constantly being refilled with hot water -- is a very communal activity. He involved his friends as a focus group, and worked with another friend (Bret Hobbs, a North Beach resident) on the product's graphic design. While a glass of beer isn't usually passed around the table per se, by honoring the taste of the ingredients rather than trying to twist them and incorporating his friends' opinions, Jim Woods has built something of a communal feeling into what is just a gimmick to other companies with similar products (B-to-the-E, "caffeine beer," etc). Additionally, it's the influence of certain communities--Jim's neighborhood store, organic foods purveyors, and organic foods enthusiasts -- that are starting the ball rolling of Mateveza's success.

There are many fine examples of patisseries and boulangeries that make wonderful coffee. Cocola, located in the Westfield, that wondrous new monstrosity of a shopping complex, is not one of them. While we're confident that most savvy SFist readers would have realized this on some fundamental level, we hoped that our instincts would prove wrong. After all, most everyone gets dragged on occasion to the mall or a similar place they'd rather not be; the promise of a decent cup of joe in the Westfield would have done much to mitigate our own reluctance.

The last time our wife made us (your Trimethyldioxypurist and son [Formula-ist? Trimeth Jr?]) come to the mall with her, we were happy to see a Peet's coffee right there on the food court level. We actually bought a pound of coffee, since we like Peet's fine and wanted our free drip. After the money changed hands, we asked for our bonus prize -- and the clerk told us that "We aren't really a Peet's, we're part of [the adjacent] Bristol Farms." And that, in addition to accidentally supporting a non-union grocer (per the ever-present protesters at the mall's entrances), meant we were S.O.L. in getting that free drip. Umm, then why is the branding just like a real Peet's, with no asterisk or disclaimer? You don't go to McDonald's to be told "sorry, no Happy Meals here," for crying out loud. We're pretty mad about this, and at the "real Peet's" too for allowing it. So "fake Peet's" at the Westfield is now a no-no for us, and was certainly not an option on this trip.

We wonder if a decent coffee purveyor could really make a go of it in a place like the Westfield, where the cost of doing business must be astronomical, and prices would need to reflect that. It's natural for management to look for opportunities to cut corners. It'd be nice, though, if for once an establishment at a large venue like the Westfield would say "great coffee would enhance our product," rather than "coffee's not our main thing; it doesn't really matter."

In any case, we tried Cocola, which is on the top floor (aside from the movie theater level), near the rather nice sitting area, and hoped for the best.

Hey, folks. It's been a while. Accordingly, we should probably reprint our mission statement:

Or something like that.

Your Trimethyldioxypurist has been very happy with his coffee-related life; we're utilizing our good brewer, good water, freshly roasted beans, and somewhat decent burr grinder to consistently enjoy our coffee at home. And when we feel like going out for an espresso drink, we tend to hit the favorites we've talked about in the past.

In other words, not much has changed. We've settled into a comfortable, happy caffeine routine. Great for us, not so great in terms of prolific writing. We've become a creature of habit, if you will.

Speaking of "habit" -- we were a little intrigued when we heard about San Francisco-based roaster "Meth Coffee," who had enough media coverage on launch day that we actually heard somebody on news radio talking about it.

The brand's provocative name is underscored by its marketing scheme: an anonymous roaster ("The Roaster") who transmits his missives from some underground bunker or safehouse, describing the strange and wonderful effects from his lastest concoctions.

Yeah, it's a gimmick. It struck us at first as silly and poser-ish; specialty coffee is a sector that as whole is attempting to be taken seriously; this kind of silliness sort of undermines those efforts. The schtick also enforces a message that the "buzz" is what's most important in a brew--a sentiment that many specialty coffee aficionados and purveyors try to counter daily.

On the positive side, if you dig a little deeper into the company's Web site, you'll find some pretty amusing stuff (we were tickled by the recipe for "sock coffee," for instance). Also, the notion of a special "buzz" is backed up by ingredients -- Meth Coffee contains some Yerba Mate as well, which is known to give a caffeine-like boost. Therefore, a combination conceptually could be very successful in helping one "get up and go."

In any case, we hoped that our actual tasting of the coffee would mitigate our initial negative sentiments about the branding. A company rep was kind enough to send us a 10 oz. sample, which usually retails for $12.

Please excuse us. We need to take issue with an article, "French roast brews, sip for sip" in today's Los Angeles Times.

Why were we reading the L.A. Times, you ask? We're secretly Angelino-philes (that's why we poke fun at them sometimes).

We happened upon the above-linked piece and, being your Trimethyldioxypurist, thought we should weigh in on the flawed methodology, the lack of transparency in tasting method, and, perhaps most of all, we wanted to take up for our friends at Graffeo, whose dark roast is described in the article as having "chocolate aromas and a soft finish," but being "rather flat."

Okay, Graffeo may have a Beverly Hills location, but that's a San Francisco company you're messing with, L.A. Times. We're calling bullcrap on this whole "review piece."

First of all, much like SFist Mary Ladd's excellent point about Bill Addison's over-taqueria-ing in the Chron a little while ago, you're not being fair to any of the sampled products by tasting 13 of them at once. This is hogwash. Coffee is complex, and those complexities are often subtle; would you lend any credibility to a similar article tasting 13 types of Zinfandel in one sitting? We don't think so.

Second beef: The article says the coffees were "all brewed identically in French presses." Any true coffeephile knows that flavor profiles of different beans/brands/blends are optimized differently, even if all purport to be "French Roast." An additional or reduced volume of ground coffee, a hotter or cooler brew temperature, more or less steep time, a slightly coarser or finer grind -- slight differences in any of these factors could highlight one or two of these 13 products and mask the finer qualities of many of the others. Would you prepare every type of heirloom tomato the same way? No! French Roast is just a ; an important designation that, however, does not make it okay to prepare the same way across the board.

In part one of our spotlight on Ritual Roasters, we told you the backstory behind one the the Mission's most popular new cafes. We did, however, save one important component of that story for this follow-up: the origin of the name. Sure, the name "Ritual Roasters," resonates, has nice alliteration, and may seem like a no-brainer. For Eileen Hassi and Jeremy Tooker, though, the process was agonizing.

"Other than securing the financing to open the cafe, deciding on the name was the most difficult part of the process," says Hassi.

The two of them looked through books of antiquated names and dictionaries, both conventional and unconventional. After going through a bevy of materials, they looked back at an old list and found the name "Ritual," which they both liked. Tooker, in particular, has an interesting take on the significance of name to a coffee house. To him, the name represents an individual's method of making coffee -- one's "muscle memory," which makes a barista's technique "your thing and yours alone."

When asked about extracurricular activities, they quickly mention that they participate in Litquake. Amusingly, Ritual has its own bicycle posse known as "RCCBP" (Ritual Coffee Club Bike Posse), which meets up with Critical Mass. They create a costume theme for each one; at the time of our conversation it was "Critical Mustache," but the upcoming one this Friday is "Critical Superhero." Ritual also at times displays works of local artists. However, Hassi and Tooker tend to stick to the business at hand, mostly because, as Hassi says, "special events tend to detract."

One special event that the gang participates in, however, is Barista competitions, both regional and national. Two of the baristi at Ritual participate in such events and train their asses off for them: Gabriel Boscana and Ryan Brown.

"Our friends pitied us when they saw this place," says Eileen Hassi, co-proprietor of red-hot Mission District cafe Ritual Roasters. "They told us we were doing everything wrong."

Jeremy Tooker, her co-proprietor, agreed. "We had too much space, they said," he says. "We'd never fill the tables. The streets around here were dead before 10 a.m."

What may have seemed a series of missteps and misadventures to Hassi and Tooker's peers turned out to be serendipity -- the stuff that goes into the best of origin stories. Stuffed into the back office, under the eyes of a giant millipede for whom the gang was pet sitting, the Eileen and Jeremy talked to SFist about how and why they got their start, what it's like to run a small business in one of San Francisco's hippest 'hoods, some of the keys to their recent success, and what's next to come.

So, get this -- Cafe Gratitude has coffee. It's not brewed, but instead, per the cafe's menu, "infused for 48 hours in cold water." Organic beans, no less, from a company known as "Thanksgiving Co.", according to the server we spoke with.

We knew we had to try it. We anticipated something awful (though not as awful as our last adventure in coffee), and were looking forward to writing some wonderful headline like "Grateful Dread."

Well, truth be told, while it ain't like the coffee like we're used to, it wasn't so bad.