PSA
If you haven’t been into your independent bookstore lately, make sure you go as soon as you are able. Not only will you be supporting your local bookdealer, you will potentially also find some great events.
I have to give a shout out to Magic City Books, my local favorite. The last time I was there with my list, I paid attention to the promotions for some upcoming events.
One of these was the book launch of The Coffee Purist by Brian Franklin. Franklin is a local character and coffee roaster purist. The event was hosted at Franklin’s own the DoubleShot Coffee Co. DoubleShot and Franklin are both institutions in Tulsa. We decided to attend. Of course we bought the book at the event.
This is a long post with a long book blurb and author note. I could not edit any of it because the premise and the author is so genuine, innovative and interesting.
About the book:
“You should write a book.”
People have been telling me that for years. And I didn’t totally disagree, but writing a book seemed like a Pheidippidean task. One beyond my endurance, beyond my attention span, maybe beyond my abilities. But as we approach the 20th anniversary of The DoubleShot, I’ve started looking back over my career and thinking about all the crazy and remarkable things that have happened. I’ve grown and matured and found a deeper well of patience and a team that supports what I do. I’ve found a rhythm to life, and it has allowed me to stop and think for once, not about what I should be doing, but about what happened and how I got here.
And so I’ve written. I’ve written things that no one knows about. I’ve written things I’d forgotten about. I’ve never been a big talker (well, I talk big but I don’t talk a lot usually), and I don’t particularly enjoy telling people about things I’ve done. “How was your trip?” Ugh. Well, it’s all in there. I dug deep. I went back to the beginning, even earlier, and I explained my thoughts, my experiences, my perspective. I’m fortunate that I started journaling in my early 20s and have filled up nearly 30 diaries with a bazillion words describing everything from the mundane day to my wildest dreams. So I had that to reference when trying to recall how or when something happened.
But it’s more than the story of my coffee career. This is a book that will tell you what coffee is, where it comes from, where it came from, how it gets from tropical farms to your coffee table. I’m attempting to lay out everything you need to know to really appreciate coffee. So that, whether you’re brewing bad grocery store coffee or sipping on some of the finest beans in the world, your coffee experiences will be better by being fully informed.
I want you to understand how I think. You’ve been looking at me for years wondering what the hell is going on inside my skull, and I couldn’t explain it. But I’m going to explain it. I’m going to tell you how I learned to run and how that taught me to run a business. I’m going to explain what it was like living without utilities for three-and-a-half years. Why I slept in a plastic chair on the streets of Long Beach. How I barely kept from peeing my pants with a pistol pointed at my forehead in Guatemala. And I’ll tell you what I learned from all those experiences, and more.
It’s not just my story, though. This has been a group endeavor. My purpose has always been to serve great coffee to you. Without you there is no DoubleShot. Without you I have no purpose. So I wrote this book for you. It’s an extension of the coffee. It’s a rear-view explanation of all the events you may have been a part of, or wondered about, or heard rumors about, or didn’t know about. I’ll fill in all the gaps. Whether you’ve been coming to the DoubleShot since the beginning or just a couple years, if you’re a fan, you’re Folk.
Just the other day I parked my car and walked up the street to have lunch, and a clean-cut young guy was walking toward me. Straight toward me. Awkwardly bee-lining it for me. When he got close, he told me I make the best coffee on the planet. He told me he was a huge fan, and had been coming in since we were in the old location. I’m probably better at reading negative reviews than I am at taking compliments, so I clumsily thanked him and said something like, “We try hard.” But that guy is folk. He’s why I wrote this book. Maybe you’ve been buying coffee from us online. Maybe you’ve never heard of DoubleShot Coffee Company. That’s ok too, because no one ever heard of us until they did. And when you know, you know.
Yes, this is a book project, but if coffee is a big part of your life (even more if DoubleShot is a big part of your life), this is a field guide for you. I promise you’ll enjoy it.
(From the author himself from his website.)
About the author:
Brian Franklin is the founder, owner, and roastmaster of DoubleShot Coffee Company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Franklin opened the DoubleShot in 2004, after a five-year career as a personal trainer and a couple years grinding out the foundations and support needed to get his foot in the door of the specialty coffee industry. Living in a run-down apartment without utilities for the first three-and-a-half years, the roastmaster proved his pluck, and a faithful group of unconventional characters formed the core of a diverse customer group known as DoubleShot Folk. Coffee-centric, staunch, and single-minded, Franklin earned the moniker “Coffee Nazi” early on for his desire to serve coffee unmuddied by milk and sugar, and his unwillingness to compromise his standards in coffee or in life.
With a background in sport, Franklin grew into an ultra-endurance athlete, where hours spent on the run or in the saddle of a mountain bike forged in him the attributes of patience, toughness, and perseverance. But many of the finer details of business management came out of his countless crashes, failures, DNFs, injuries, and occasional victories over the course of a racing career that has spanned well over half a lifetime.
Intent on knowing the people who cultivate the products he serves, Franklin began traveling to coffee farms within a year of opening the doors of the DoubleShot. Amid his journeys around the globe, he acquired knowledge and know-how through experiences, some of which were harrowing, all of which combined to change his outlook on the world. From staring down the barrel of a gun on a volcán mountaintop to a practical immersion in fluid dynamics in his half-joking creation of the DoubleShot Space Program, Franklin has lived his life in an astute awareness, acquiring experiential wisdom far and wide.
Attracting attention for his earnestness as well as his foolhardy disregard for conventions or protocol, the DoubleShot, with Franklin at the helm, has been the subject of documentary, popular sitcom, and frequent bouts of controversy. Distractions notwithstanding, it’s been a career obsessed with a simple mission: to serve excellent coffee to as many people as possible. As that number of people has grown exponentially, Franklin’s understanding of the potentiality of excellent coffee has bloomed to a seemingly unattainable standard.
(From his website.)
What I thought….
I immediately came home from the author talk/book signing and popped open this massive book (425 pages). I’m sure that I’m not the first one to joke about this being a coffee table book about coffee. (Are you old enough to catch the Seinfeld* reference?)
Franklin is indeed a free spirit, a purist, and truly driven. He’s also not afraid to piss people off. (That’s his honest self.)
The book is based on his many journals. There might be some rambling but I found it very interesting rambling. I mean, this guy has done it all. Talk about adventures…. While he takes his coffee seriously, his voice and style in the book is honest and at times he seems amazed that he is where he is.(The entire back of the book jacket lists reasons why you should never own a coffee shop.)
Franklin is well-known in the coffee world and is a local character. He name drops a bit about the heavy-hitters in that microcosmic coffee world. He also drops a few names from the DoubleShot family fans and patrons. That being said, I still think that if you have never been to Tulsa or never stepped foot into DoubleShot, you will still enjoy this book. It is full of weird wisdom and some even weirder tales.
There are stories in the book you might have heard outside of Tulsa. Franklin took on Starbucks and won (2006) basically due to his obstinate personality and drive for justice. Maybe you remember the “Tweet Heard ‘Round the World'” (even though I think that was a pretty localized scandal). Have you seen the documentary The Perfect Cappuccino (2008)? Franklin and DoubleShot figure in to that film. Do you remember “Coffee Shop Manifesto” from Portlandia. Carrie Brownstein visited DoubleShot, snapped a picture of “The Rules on Ordering” and was inspired.
Some of his tales have really nothing to do with coffee, roasting or running a business. They are just hilarious: “Porsche on Fire” (132-122) and when his apartment is skewered (an “apartment-ka-bob”) (182).
While I mentioned this was a coffee-table sized book, there’s a lot more substance in the writing. Franklin’s style is so readable but wise. The coffee travel stories will appeal to some. His wise pronouncements will appeal to some. The weird stories appealed to me.
Final PSA to this long post:
If you haven’t visited your truly local coffee roaster recently, do so as soon as you are able.
*About two years after DoubleShot opened, we decided to go on a coffee tour of Tulsa. (This was back before we could do a brewery tour.) At that time, I was not a really big coffee drinker. I’m embarrassed to say that I literally walked up to the counter and ordered a chai. “We don’t serve chai. Next!” (Another Seinfeld allusion there. Get it?) I hate to admit this and I wish I had told Franklin this gem of a story when he was signing my book.
The Food:
I’m only including this section because that’s what I do with reviews.
Obviously, coffee.
Franklin mentions lots of good food cooked by honest folk on the coffee farms he visits: chicken marinated in native limes and served on homemade tortillas, other hearty food meant to nourish. There’s his treatise on how to prepare ramen (steep it in boiling water and drain, season, and add some chicken-pork sausage). There is an actual chicken salad recipe “if you’re ready to put your coffee shop out of its misery…”(89). Columbian food is given a brief mention. There is a lovely photo of the pumpkin bread that they source and serve in the shop.
I am, however, also still linking up to Foodies Read.
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