Just Realized It's Cortado O'Clock

Monday, 10:51 AM

From: Harry

Dear Randa

This pic genuinely did stop me in my tracks. VC-backed Loserville coffee company Blank Street Coffee advertising an iced cortado?? I immediately hit the fellas chat with the “look how they massacred my boy meme”

Real heads have long known that the cortado is the perfect espresso drink.

You can’t really say it much better than Mr lindy…. 

I am not gatekeeping a 400-year-old espresso bev, I have no problem with the cortado Going Global. I’m not here to say that I Hit It First (i did)... or to do a victory lap on Drinking Coffee Drinks That Actually Taste Like Coffee (been had)….but I do want to ask you–why now? 

We’re an esoteric new media enterprise, this is exactly the type of stuff we need to chew on. Why is the iced cortado having a venture-backed coffee moment? I have two theories. 

I. The ‘Cold Brew is Mid’ Revolution. 

Cold brew sucks ass. It tastes like gasoline. It also makes you feel totally insane. Normal people don’t need that much caffeine that quickly. Even though it ostensibly tastes more like coffee, it actually is the drink for coffee haters because what it replaced was a giant mega-sized iced coffee from Dunkin’ or something – this is real coffee.

It’s so fucked up that people drink something called “concentrate”. Iced coffee, like proper iced coffee, is dead. I wish it weren’t, but it is. So maybe the iced cortado as an attempt to fill that lane? 

II. Smol boy minimalism drink du jour

Why Are You, As a Man, Being Aesthetic. We’ve all seen this newish type of guy. Filming himself waking up, making his bed. Guy Emily Mariko. Living my perfect well adjusted emotionally in-touch life where I never leave my pristine new york apartment. These guys are the cotrado encarnet. The only problem is “These Guys” don’t actually exist. There is a weird quadruple-reflected mirror composite guy that only exists online. But that is exactly the type of “guy” that blank street’s vc market research agency is telling them they should target. 

And that’s how you get an iced cortado ad in Soho (?)

Wednesday, 7:14AM

From: Randa

I don’t drink coffee, but a couple weeks ago I drank a whole coffee to see if it would make me want to do my taxes (and also because i felt bad that my friend had bought it for me). It tasted OK because I put three packets of sugar in there. It did not make me want to do my taxes.

I know people are mad about Blank Street for similar reasons I am skeptical of FAAS… It turns what could be a lovely cultural experience into an optimized assembly line-esque operation. When it comes to coffee, though, I think that’s ok.

We probably do need two kinds of coffee shops - the utilitarian Blank Street and the vibe-forward indie roaster. Based on my observations of the typical coffee fiend, it seems that most of you just want good-tasting coffee as fast as possible. Maybe it’s a leisure activity on the weekend, but most of the time your consumption actually is about efficiency. And Blank Street caters to that need.

Regarding the popularity of the cortado itself, let us revisit the cerulean scene from The Devil Wears Prada:

I think you could say that coffee drinks go in and out of style like fashion. Bon Appetit did a trend piece on the cortado in 2013. If i were to make an analogy to the cerulean scene, Blank Street is the Casual Corner of coffee shops. If Blank Street thinks cortados are cool, then they are no longer cool. You should find a new coffee drink if you are using it as a means to express your trendiness.

Anyway, I initially thought it took me a while to answer your post because I got sick either from eating gas station ramen, circus fries, or surfing after the first rain of the season. But digestive catastrophes aside, I still couldn’t get it up for the cortado. I’m just gonna come out and say it. I think coffee culture is really fucking annoying.

I hate when I am on trips with people and we have to stop for coffee and I have to listen to everyone’s opinions about said coffee. I hate how people make personality traits out of the type of coffee or how many cups they have or how they are trying to replace it with some sort of mushroom concoction. Grow up and keep it to yourself! The only type of coffee consumption I find tolerable, incidentally, is going somewhere like Blank Street, ordering whatever you want, drinking it, and not saying anything about it.

Perhaps this is revealing of my distaste for dependency of any kind…

you could say that i prefer to hit life raw…

Wednesday, 8:48 AM

From: Harry

One thing we can agree on is that those mushroom coffee supplements are fucked up. I hate seeing an Instagram ad with a weirdly flexible-looking dry-fit ass dude explaining why coffee is bad for you. They’ve totally lost what good and bad mean. 

I don’t like these things either –

That cortado trend piece you sent is really funny. I’m dying at this being the reasoning behind the cortado being a trending drink in 2013: 

“The reign of cappuccinos, lattes, and mochas has been overthrown! Or so it seems, because the cortado is The Order at today's best coffee shops—so much so, in fact, that it has its own hashtag, #dailycortado”

(i’m not one to talk but there is also a typo in the published version of the actual BA article. The blog era was different!)

It’s funny to think that the reason something was perceived as trendy was that it was trending on Instagram…so like pretty pictures were being taken of it? I’m not sure what data I’d use to prove something was trending…maybe like references in podcasts?? (I’m imagining Thiel backed marketing firm using AI NLP to determine that three downtown podcasts referenced “the cortado” in one or more episodes in the last month)

I also think that if the cortado is trending, it certainly is no longer trending because it makes for a good frothed milk art canvas. I’d even go as far to say as most of the people who were taking latte art pictures in 2013, would now not dare to post a latte art pic today. They’ve traded it in for videos of them making espresso in the morning, or holding the aesthetically pleasing tiny Cortado cup. The cortado isn’t the main character, it’s a key cog in a larger aesthetic composition.

For the record, I don’t think any of this is good. I don’t do stuff like that. I drink Cortados because too much milk makes me feel like a sleepy little guy. Also for the record, 2013 was NOT the year of the Cortado. People were drinking pour-over coffee and saying stuff like “I prefer single origin.”

I’ve never seen The Devil Wears Prada but that scene goes hard. Though I do think coffee is different than clothes. Even though there are maybe 20 different ways you can combine milk and coffee to make a drink, there are 5 million shades of blue. 

As far as convincing you to like coffee, I think I’ve got no chance. I’ll leave you with this. The only good scene in a show that I totally didn’t understand but watched because everyone On-Line was freaking out about “David Lynch”

Also, what do you do when you're tired??

Thursday, 9:09AM

From: Randa

I go to sleep

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