Negative Space: coffee
- Buffalo, Texas: The Horse’s Mouth on Highway 79
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This tiny little bookshop and coffeehouse is worth stopping at if you’re on Highway 79 and need a browse, a coffee, or a shake.
- Coffee and Coffeehouses
- Ralph S. Hattox’s book is subtitled “The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East”. He summarizes the history of coffee’s rise in the Near East, and its growth as a social facilitator much like alcohol elsewhere, with cafés replacing the function of bars.
- The Coffeehouse: Social Norms, Social Symbols
- That coffee’s use was very similar to wine’s use did not escape the attention of authorities. One of the traditions they seized on was the “passing of the cup”, where coffee drinkers would sit around passing a single cup of coffee from one to the other “in the manner of an intoxicant”.
- The Coming of Coffee to the Near East
- From its origin among the Sufi of Yemen, coffee spread throughout the Muslim world. It generated controversy as it spread because it was a new thing and religious leaders needed to decide if it was forbidden or not.
- Don’t Get Jittery Over Caffeine
- Despite what you’ve read, coffee probably isn’t harmful in moderation. In fact, caffeine may be a useful drug. Denise Grady writes about the health statistics of caffeine and coffee consumption in Discover, July 1986, pp. 73-79.
- Drug Information
- Links to web sites with useful information about recreational drugs, especially caffeine and cannabis.
- Drug Sellers On the Net!
- Where to buy drugs on the Internet. Mostly legal drugs, such as coffee and tea, as well as information about drugs, and legal things made from illegal drugs, such as hemp.
- The Great Coffee Controversy
- As with other drugs, it isn’t coffee itself that attracts prohibition, but rather, who is drinking it and the fact that they are gathering together that causes uneasiness and fear in rulers.
- Lethargy, Leprosy, and Melancholia: Coffee and Medieval Medicine
- The attempts at prohibiting coffee strictly followed the pattern for other drugs: claim outrageous medical problems, and use it to harass unapproved groups.
- Recent Findings (Coffee)
- It isn’t just drug users that are stereotyped. How we view lab results depends on how we view the drug.
- Society and the Social Life of the Coffeehouse
- While visiting coffeehouses, people could show hospitality outside of its traditional place in the home: they could even buy rounds for the bar, so to speak, and show hospitality to strangers. The actions described here in coffeehouses strongly resembles what we see men do in bars: talk trash about women, tell tall tales, and listen to music.
- Taverns without Wine: The Rise of the Coffeehouse
- Where alcohol was illegal and restaurants non-existent, coffeehouses presented a compelling attraction for those wishing to socialize.
- Wine, Coffee, and the Holy Law
- From its introduction to Islamic culture, coffee has been equated with wine, an explicitly forbidden drug. Part of the controversy is the application of traditional but apocryphal sayings of the prophet to this new drink.
More Information
- Café Magazine
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Including Black Apollo: The History of Coffee and Cafés in the West.
