Scott Bush

It’s not my pri­mary intent to blog about pet peeves, as most peo­ple won’t find it inter­est­ing or infor­ma­tive. But I sim­ply have to men­tion some­thing I’ve been observ­ing a lot since begin­ning work at the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton: laziness.

Not in respect to study­ing, work­ing, or any­thing major like that. It’s sim­ple stuff. To wit: auto­mated door open­ers and ele­va­tors. Why in the world do able-bodied peo­ple avail them­selves of these tools that they don’t need? They should be grate­ful they have legs that work.

• Auto­mated door open­ers are designed to pro­vide equal access to wheelchair-bound indi­vid­u­als who oth­er­wise wouldn’t be able to eas­ily pull open a door and go through. They’re an admirable fea­ture of the ADA and a boon to those who need them. Unless you’re in a wheel­chair or oth­er­wise mobility-impaired (or a clinically-diagnosed ger­mo­phobe), you shouldn’t be using them to open the door for you!

• Single-floor ele­va­tor rides are a waste of energy and lazy. Per­haps not as aggre­giously so as using an auto­mated door opener, but still.

Granted there are excep­tions. If you’re approach­ing a build­ing with your arms full of boxes that you’d have to set down to open the door, then I can see that as a rea­son to bump the but­ton. And if you’re going up a few flights or more, then sure; hop in the ele­va­tor. Or if you’re elderly or have trou­ble breath­ing, for exam­ple. But I’m talk­ing about the lazy peo­ple who can’t be both­ered to reach out and pull open a door or walk up a set of stairs. And no, I don’t mean some hid­den stair­well on the other side of the build­ing. Schmitz Hall (where I see these acts occur daily) has a huge, open stair­case in the lobby pro­vid­ing easy access to the sec­ond floor. Plenty of times I’ve walked into the build­ing (pulling open the door, mind you) and watched peo­ple get into the ele­va­tor, only to meet them as they emerge on the sec­ond floor. Infirm? No, but good question—they’re nor­mal and (appar­ently) healthy individuals.

If peo­ple in this coun­try are con­cerned with obe­sity and over­all declin­ing health, I’d rec­om­mend start­ing with the small things. Don’t eat fast food, drink less (or no) soda, and start open­ing doors with you arms and opt­ing for the stairs. It’ll prob­a­bly go a long way.

Like last year, my wife Crys­tal and I headed out early this Sun­day morn­ing to Seat­tle to par­tic­i­pate in the St. Pat’s Dash. We signed up through my for­mer employer, Quad­rant O’Homes a few weeks back, fig­ur­ing that by the time today rolled around the weather will have warmed up.

We were wrong.

It was cold, dark, and rain­ing a bit as we headed down to Seat­tle. Halfway there, we noticed the rain was stick­ing to our wind­shield, which rain doesn’t do. But snow does. And sure enough, by the time we were had parked and walked to the Cen­ter House the flakes were big and falling steadily. Snow on the ides of March. Global cli­mate change, anyone?

But we toughed it out. We checked in and said hello to my Quad­rant friends work­ing the event, then headed out through the snow and rain to the start­ing area. It was crowded, but not as packed as I remem­ber it being last year. Some folks prob­a­bly bailed and hon­estly, we thought about it too but didn’t want to flake. Besides, we’re Seattle-ites; we can han­dle the rain, right?

Sort of.

The event emcees informed us over the loud­speak­ers that snow on race day is a first in the 28-year his­tory of the St. Pat’s Dash. It was bloody cold and by the time we’d emerged from under the bridge cross­ing Mer­cer we were cold and drenched. My feet were get­ting wet due to all the rain run­ning through the street (and the holes in my shoes, of course). We enjoyed the excite­ment, the nov­elty, and par­tic­i­pat­ing with many thou­sands of oth­ers on the run, but we were not lov­ing our cold hands, wet feet, and numb ears. So we took a shorter route and headed back to the foun­tain area on the east side of Key Arena to col­lect our free stuff: organic apples, a bot­tle of Fuze drink, and some Cougar Moun­tain cook­ies. I felt bad for the ven­dors and groups there who clearly didn’t get the atten­tion they thought they’d get. Dash­ers were pretty much grab­bing what free­bies they could and were head­ing back to cars or indoors.

Would we do it again next year? Maybe… ask me once we know the weather report. But it’d be worth it to see peo­ple wear­ing Snug­gies again.

First, some back­ground: I now work at the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton in the Registrar’s office (2nd floor Schmitz Hall). I attended the UW as a stu­dent and spent many a lunch time scour­ing Uni­ver­sity Way for food and cof­fee. And that’s the last time you’ll hear (read?) me refer­ring to the street by its proper name… which nobody calls it. It’s “The Ave.” Much of my time these days is spent con­sult­ing and work­ing on side projects, and what bet­ter place to do that than at a cof­fee shop? Since I’ve been fre­quent­ing these estab­lish­ments a lot recently, I thought I’d share my impres­sions. So keep an eye out for reviews of cof­fee shops on or around the Ave in the com­ing weeks.

Café Alle­gro

cafeallegromusic.com | Map and info

Cof­fee

The cof­fee at Alle­gro is good. Not mind-blowingly good, but cer­tainly decent. Prob­a­bly 3.5 out of 5 beans, to coin a silly rat­ing sys­tem.  I’ve had their lattes, mochas, and drip coffee.

• Beans — The serve Browns Cof­fee; not a roaster I’d heard of before, but is fair trade cer­ti­fied so that’s good.
• Milk — They use Mead­owsweet milk, which I know because it’s easy to see every­thing going on as the barista makes your drink.
• Mocha — Yes, def­i­nitely at Alle­gro. They use pow­dered Ghi­rardelli cocoa that they pour the shots into, add some milk and stir, fin­ish­ing with milk to the top of the cup. Sweet, but not overly so.
• Con­tainer — To go cups are plain white paper. Drinks enjoyed on site are served in glass mugs with a han­dle (tall) or card­board sleeve (grande).

Prices

Like most cof­fee shops, Allegro’s not cheap. A tall latte (my usual bev­er­age) runs $3.15. Make it a mocha and you’ll pay $3.40. Tall drip is $1.65. On the good side, though, all their espresso drinks include two shots, which sort of evens the play­ing field when it comes to tall bev­er­ages. Inter­est­ingly, all menu prices include tax.

Watch out if you pay by debit or credit: there’s a 25-cent sur­charge (or, as a sign on the reg­is­ter states, there’s “a dis­count for cash.” It’s all about per­spec­tive, I suppose).

Ser­vice

The baris­tas I’ve encoun­tered seem nice, and the atmos­phere is laid back. On more than one occa­sion, though, i’ve had to wait while the barista chats with the cus­tomer pay­ing. I’m all for friendly inter­ac­tions (isn’t that what a cof­feeshop should have?) but it’s frus­trat­ing to wait behind some­one talk­ing to the barista after they’ve ordered, had their drink made, and paid. Also, with the barista usu­ally respon­si­ble for ring­ing up cus­tomers (at least when I’m there around lunchtime) it can be slow. I typ­i­cally get a table and set up shop and wait for the line to die down before going for my beverage.

Loca­tion

Alle­gro claims to be the old­est cof­fee shop in Seat­tle; not sure about that but it’s def­i­nitely been around a long, long time. It’s located down an alley off 42, just off the Ave. Not the eas­i­est place to find under the best of cir­cum­stances, but right now its worse due to mas­sive con­struc­tion next door. You’ve got to squeeze your­self past dump­sters and cranes and con­sturction work­ers to get to the place.

Once you do, though, you can sit in one of three main areas. There’s the main lobby near the cof­fee bar (I’ve never sat there). A small hall­way opens to the back room, which is nice and where I spend most of my time. There’s also an upstairs area that is com­pletely dis­con­nected from the main area. You have to go out­side, then up a flight of stairs to reach it. It’s cool up there and even has a deck and is usu­ally much less busy. (Appar­ently they have live music there on Fri­day nights, hence the name of their web­site.) Thank­fully, the WiFi works fine up there. Alle­gro has two net­works for bet­ter cov­er­age, which is a nice touch.

No, I’m not talk­ing about Beyonce’s “All the sin­gle ladies,” though one would cer­tainly for­give you for think­ing so. I’m talk­ing about the Fleet Foxes’ White Win­ter Hym­nal. You’ve prob­a­bly not heard it yet, as the FF are just gain­ing some pop­u­lar­ity. Take a lis­ten (and a watch) to the song, the sec­ond track from their self-titled album, Fleet Foxes:

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