There must be a caffine-to-snark corollary. On Friday, the Swiss Water Coffee Studio opened up shop in an abandoned Soho gas station, and internet chaos ensued. The reason: the pop-up shop, open from Oct. 30 to Nov. 8, only served decaf coffee.
What kind of chaos are we talking about? New York Eater proclaimed it to be the first sign of the cultural apocalypse. (Dramatic much?) One Twitter user compared it to a bar selling alcohol-free wine, while another declared the shop owners to be “the enemies of man.”
Yeah. Things escalated quickly. The summary: Anyone who would drink caffeine-free coffee must be a Pinko Communist nutjob. Or something like that.
In the shop’s defense, a lot of reactions to its opening were actually positive. As Nobletree Coffee, who paired up with Swiss Water to offer their decaf Nitro coldbrew at the pop-up, stated on Instagram, “What is coffee without caffeine? It’s coffee that coffee lovers can drink late into the night and still fall asleep.” Amen. (And can we also mention that it’s coffee which people with health issues aggravated by caffeine can enjoy?)
While the shop is only open until the end of this week (when we’ll surely all discover that it was a piece of performance art by Banksy), decaf lovers are in for some good news: Swiss Water has bags of their small-batch beans available for purchase online and in coffee shops around the country.
And if all of this aggravates you to no end… perhaps a little less caffeine might be in order?
