It’s GOOD to get out of the house. We made a very brief visit to New York to attend the 3rd Annual Coffee + Tea Festival held at the Metropolitan Pavilion. The event celebrated everything related to coffee + tea. Funds were raised for the official event charity, Cup for Education.
New York was beautiful this tim
e of year, crisp and sunny—reminds us of a SoCal winter. It was also great to finally eat again. Yes, I said EAT. For those who don’t live in Rincon, that’s the one thing paradise lacks—you can’t find diverse cuisine here. I’m talking Indian, Thai, Japanese (rare) and Vietnamese food? Forget about it. We ate like it was our last meal on Earth. In one hour, we had Thai at a Farmer’s Market and pizza around the corner. In fact, most of our pictures on this trip were of us eating!At the festival, we attended the Art of Japanese Tea given by Tea Master Yoshikazu Tafu and tasted wonderfully fresh Sencha and Genmaicha, among others.
We also chatted up movie director/producer Su Friedrich who made From the Ground Up, a documentary that shows "how an ordinary cup of coffee occupies center stage in the world economy"—or as we like to put it—the life of a bean. We attended a coffee cupping class (like wine—sip, swirl and spit), and were all ears when Chris Cason of Tavalon discussed the future of tea and recent trends in the industry.
Wow, we remember the days of attending Advertising conferences and Music festivals! It’s interesting to switch industries (again). But although the coffee festival was informative, the real education was on the STREET. We did recon at a handful of specialty coffee houses and observed baristas at Ninth Street Espresso, Grumpy’s, Gimme Coffee and Joe the Art of Coffee pour amazing latte art into our cups.
Ninth Street Espresso in the Chelsea Market was by far the best cappuccino New York has to offer. It's a bold statement but Ninth Street does live up to the hype as Kim—our barista—poured beautiful rosettas from Stumptown coffee. And right now, we're already gearing up to attend the 21st Annual SCAA Conference in Atlanta next year, as part of our ongoing coffee education.
On our journey via foot in the Big Apple, we paid close attention to the graphic design on storefronts, which was all about simplicity—the use of 1-2 colors and sans serif fonts. We appreciate good design and it was inspirational to just walk and soak it all in. Talking about design—we got back home just in time for the 1st Annual Rincon International Film Festival (see poster we designed for the event). Rincon turned into a big block party as it welcomed filmmakers from as far as China and Germany. There were a lot of great flicks–from comedy, horror, chick flicks, surf films to documentaries. We look forward to '09!It’s been a great month.
Con Amor, T2 and Mario
