Commentary: I hate myself for loving you

almost out of beans at home

I have a confession to make: there is something about myself that I REALLY don’t like. It embarrasses me. It’s an aspect of my personality that aligns me with the “wrong” group of people, people I despise, people who represent all that is wrong with the world, people who make me want to punch them in the face.

I hate me, well, part of me, but I’ve lived with this secret shame for too long now, it’s time I admit it to myself, and to all of my readers.

My name is Cynthia, and I am a coffee snob.

I don’t want to be a coffee snob, but I am.

Coffee snobs are the beverage equivalent to Prius-driving douche bags who constantly brag about “how green they are” while owning multi-million dollar companies built on the backs of new-immigrant workers who are aren’t offered health benefits.

Coffee snobs are the beverage equivalent of rich trustafarian yuppies who move into the “hip” mission because they want to be fashionable, and then complain that it isn’t as clean, safe, and cute-shop-filled as their beloved Marina.

Coffee snobs are the beverage equivalent of literati academics who name-drop Tolstoy and Dostoevsky like they are personal friends. (And look at me with disdain when they discover my book is “Chick Lit”.)

Coffee snobs are, well, a pretentious pain to be around, and I don’t want to be a pretentious pain.

In my defense, the coffee snobbery isn’t my fault. The blame falls squarely on the shoulders of my father.

An unapologetic coffee snob himself, my father raised my sister and I on buying only expensive brands and grinding your own beans. That annoying, brain-splitting noise of the grinder BRRRZZZZZ, and the tap tap tap of a spoon knocking grounds into a reusable cone filter was as much a part of our childhood as pancakes on Sunday and swim parties in the summer.

I was doomed from the start to be a coffee snob, and no amount of middle of the night trips to Denny's in my teenage years could undo my genetic destiny, so in my early twenties I secretly gave in to coffee snobbery and began buying the “good stuff” and grinding at home when no one was watching.

The first few years, my coffee of choice was Peet’s. At $10 bucks a pound it was more expensive than Folgers, and well beyond the quality usually found in a typical starving artist household.

As years passed, and my career in fashion became more lucrative, I began dabbling in more and more expensive, and more difficult to find roasts; Peet’s turned in The Beanery, which turned in to Lavazza, which turned into Kona flown in from Hawaii.

As my natural born snobbery deepened, I tried everything. I compared full-bodied blends to rich aromas. I ground, tapped, and foamed my own milk with abandon, alone in my own home where no one but my husband was witness.

When out with friends, I hid my snobdom by refusing coffee altogether. When coworkers went on a “buck run” I declined, lying “Coffee makes me jittery, thanks anyway.”

I became a tea drinker, a diet coke fan, someone who doesn’t drink coffee very often, at least publicly.

These days my snobbery is getting harder and harder to hide, thanks to Blue Bottle Coffee, the most delicious of the new boutique brands to hit the market. With their 3 storefronts in San Francisco, multiple Farmers' Market appearances each week, and constant cropping up on restaurant menus, Blue Bottle is everywhere.

And Blue Bottle is impossible to resist. When I am South of Market and people suggest “let’s get coffee,” I whip out my wallet and break into a run towards 330 Ritch. At the Ferry Building when friends are browsing ice cream options, I ‘make a quick stop’ for some beans; people are starting to get wise.

People are starting to notice that when it comes to coffee I am not the low-key, low maintenance woman I pretend to be. I am the pretentious, yuppyish, snobbish Blue Bottle addict of their nightmares, and it’s time I come clean.

All I can do is hope that people will still love me when they read this, and that they will get me professional help should I ever move past blue bottle and start drinking that $100 a pound cat-poo blend.