{"id":270,"date":"2008-12-17T23:12:12","date_gmt":"2008-12-18T04:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=270"},"modified":"2008-12-17T23:13:17","modified_gmt":"2008-12-18T04:13:17","slug":"coffee-house-trenholm-road-1990s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=270","title":{"rendered":"Coffee House, Trenholm Road: 1990s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"..\/pix\/08\/12\/coffee_house01.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/pix\/08\/12\/coffee_house01_tn.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This building more or less on the corner of Trehnolm Road and Beltline Boulevard, was for years, I believe, a florist.  Then the \"espresso craze\" hit the country.<\/p>\n<p>Remember how in the awful 1991 Bruce Willis movie <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0102070\/\">Hudson Hawk<\/a> Willis had to keep explaining to everyone what a <i>Cappuccino<\/i> was?  Well, shortly thereafter, all of America knew, and coffee houses were something of a hot market item.  I believe it was about this time that <i>Cool Beans<\/i> started on College Street (under another name), as well as <i>Ibby's<\/i> in Myrtle Beach, a place on King Street in Charleston whose name I'm blanking on and several others started.  Most of this first wave of independant coffee houses located in shabby buildings and affected a very casual and laid back demeanor and their attitude was very much \"we are <i>real<\/i> coffee houses, and you should get used to us and continue to support us because <i>Starbucks<\/i> is coming\".  However, I think that was something of a put on, like having a \"real\" Irish pub in a South Eastern city.  The whole coffee-house \"culture\" was really indigenous to other parts of the country, and the local places weren't anymore \"real\" than Starbucks, though the survivors have become so over time.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from the \"culture\" there was simply a matter of competence.  Brewing the espresso seems fairly straight-forward, but it is very easy to burn the milk for items like cappuccinos or lattes after which they become completely undrinkable.  <i>Books-a-Million<\/i> still gets this wrong about two times out of ten, while I've <i>never<\/i> had it happen at <i>Starbucks<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>All of which is a lead-up for saying that sometime in the 90s, the florist shop closed and a coffee house went into the building.  I'm afraid to say that I stopped once, got a completely undrinkable latte and never went back.  They may have gotten better after that, but with the lot being rather hard to get in and out of, and with first <i>Books-A-Million<\/i> locating at Trenholm Plaza and then <i>Barnes & Noble<\/i> at Richland Mall, they were gone even before any <i>Starbucks<\/i> opened in Columbia.<\/p>\n<p>The place is now a cat hospital.  And that can keep you awake too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This building more or less on the corner of Trehnolm Road and Beltline Boulevard, was for years, I believe, a florist. Then the \"espresso craze\" hit the country. Remember how in the awful 1991 Bruce Willis movie Hudson Hawk Willis had to keep explaining to everyone what a Cappuccino was? Well, shortly thereafter, all of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[5,3],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-historic","tag-restaurants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}