Guad: Where Things Take Root

Michael was a permanent fixture at Metro.  He knew and liked everyone.  And he was liked by everyone in return because that's just who he is: a downright likable guy and great conversationalist.  But he did spend an excessive amount of time at Metro.  If you ever wanted to just shoot-the-shit or delve into the very meaning of life, you could count on Michael Vaclav to be there.  I did.  Many times.  So many times, in fact, that I fell in love.   

Don't get me wrong.  Michael and I had a tight circle of friends through whom we first got to know each other. So our relationship didn't actually start at the coffee shop. But in the spring of 2001 we found ourselves hanging out at Metro...together...a lot...A LOT.
Then one night in April we were at Metro, and I offered to drive him home.  I pulled up outside his house but he didn't get out of the car and didn't say anything; he just sat there staring out the windshield.  After a painfully awkward pause he said, "Alison, I need to ask you something..."  The next day we were officially dating.  Seven months later we were engaged.  Eight months after that we were married, young and unafraid to dream big.

Ironically, the path to pursuing big dreams started when Michael was laid-off from his job with the state in 2003.   He took a part-time job at JP's Java, which was the only place in town truly crafting specialty coffee at the time.  The true "seeds" of specialty coffee were planted in us there, and it was there we met many folks with whom we would sojourn into the coffee world. By spring 2004 we were busy creating the first Medici, which finally opened in autumn 2006 (which is a whole other glorious story).  But THEN... in late 2007 Michael had a serendipitous encounter with the owner of Metro who, of course, remembered him fondly.


The long-time owner was ready to sell his business, and (as I would say it) did not want the space to be eaten up by the monster of inauthenticity that already plagued the Drag.  Other local shops on Guadalupe such as By George, The Cadeau, Einstein's Arcade, Tower Records, etc... had all closed or relocated because leases for retail spaces on the Drag were exorbitant.  I have no doubt that Metro's owner could have sold his business in a jiffy to some drooly-panting chain store waiting to sink it's teeth into the UT demographic.  But instead he sold to us.  Newbie entrepreneurs with a huge heart for places were people drink coffee.

So in a manner of speaking, it came full circle.  Metro Espresso Bar reopened as Caffe Medici in June 2008.  We became stewards of the very space in which our relationship took root, which is why this store has such a deep, enduring place in our hearts.

And it's a good thing too.  Because running a business on the Drag has not been a walk in the park...

Guad: First Love

I didn't drink coffee until I started college at UT.  At first I drank the weak dormitory brew, which I so inundated with flavored creamers and sugar that it barely qualified as coffee.  But never mind that.  It caffeinated me through late night essays and somehow validated my status as a university student.

Post dorm life, my stimulant-riddled study habits compelled me to find a coffee shop I could call home.  Honestly, the idea of it was intimidating for this still-new-to-Austin girl.  I imagined having to sip espresso (what's that?) made by a barista (what's that?) over philosophical conversations with a niche of academics using words I'd never heard.  I did not feel at all qualified to belong to such a scene.  But I still needed coffee and a place outside my sleepy apartment to study, so I was going to have to embrace what we now call...coffee culture.

Naturally, I chose the place where all my friends went: Metro.  It was a 24hr-edgy-grungy-spacious coffee bar on the Drag, chock full of character and characters.  The business originally opened as Insomnia in the early 90's, but changed over to Metro Espresso Bar a couple of years later.  And despite the volatile retail market that forced out many local businesses on the Drag, Metro hung in there steadily serving the communities around UT for more than a decade.

There was something raw and visceral about the space.  Towering brick walls, exposed steel beams and torturously geometric chairs gave you a sense of being simultaneously welcomed and accosted.  Nights at Metro were frenetic and pulsating in a sleep-deprivation-meets-Paul-Oakenfold+a-quad-shot-latte kind of way.  Weekends were languid and introspective in a Mazzy Star kind of way. I preferred the Ben Harper/Bjork mid-afternoons with a too-sweet iced chai latte. But atmospheric preferences aside, one thing was for sure: a haze of cheap cigarette smoke pervaded every conversation and every page of every book.  For, during my turn-of-the-century era at Metro, people still smoked in doors and (for the most part) read from books and wrote on paper.

Metro Espresso Bar, Spring 2008

And read I did.  Spent hours reading and drafting essays sustained in part by the sheer energy of the place.  I can honestly say I was far more academically productive there than at the library where I immediately fell asleep or at my apartment where I studied the fridge and the Food Network.  After my school days and even now, I do some of my best writing there.  But that is only half of why I made Metro my coffee home.  I also went because of the people.

Thank goodness my stereotype of coffee shop cliques was mostly unfounded.  Certainly there were a few intimidating regulars much smarter and more loquacious than I.  But most regulars were students in need of a social living room just like me.  All kinds of young people set-up camp in Metro, which produced a steady stream of dynamic conversation.  There were passionate discussions, heated debates and outright arguments fueled by youth and ferocious appetites for truth.  Perhaps I'm romanticizing a bit here.   But as I remember it, the essence of what happened through conversations at Metro was nothing short of formative.

I loved Metro.  The coffee was college-student-passable. The espresso Rocket Shake was to die for.  The baristas were endearingly disgruntled.  I am thankful for that dirty-brilliant coffee dive with ever-open doors because it was there that I first came to love coffee culture.  And what's more, the people I came to know during that season of life are unforgettable.  Especially one...