Ideoeyesopen.com is about casting a wide net to find inspirational experiences in the unlikeliest of places—the things we do and see everyday. It is the digital compadre to the IDEO Eyes Open series of experiential guidebooks, now available through Chronicle Books.
Standing Room Only
Blue Bottle Coffee | San Francisco, CA
I’m about to wait twenty minutes for my cappuccino. And I’ll do it with pleasure. This is Blue Bottle Coffee.
To call Blue Bottle a hole in the wall is actually more truth than euphemism. It’s a storefront, maybe fifteen feet wide, with a roll up door, a take out window, perfected. The street is the café, and the café is the street. The folks behind the counter are coffee purists, serving drip, espressos, cappuccinos, and lattes without a sweetened, blended drink in sight. The crowd is happy to wait. We come for the art, not the convenience, and we’re all in it together.
Jenn is a communications designer at IDEO. Jenn’s career as a storyteller began at age seven when she penned (well, actually, penciled) her first novel. “Shark!” was a 75-page, double-spaced tour de force—the story of a beach town terrorized by a man-eating Great White. In the riveting, Scooby-Dooesque denouement, readers discover the shark’s true identity. He was simply a movie producer casting for authentic sounding screams. Friends and relatives urged Jenn’s parents to curb her TV consumption.
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