The political theory of coffee

As my powers wane I begin to look around for a less strenuous line of work, one that doesn't demand too much in the way of thought, and perhaps goes a bit lighter on the Latin and the footnotes. Several possibilities beckon, but I think I'll try political theory, which requires none of those things and gets you on TV a lot. The first political theory I shall float is the Caffeine Theory of Constitutional Development.

Coffee arrived big time in eighteenth-century London, and all these kinky guys in wigs and lacey cuffs would sit around coffeehouses drinking it by the hour. When sufficiently wired they would enunciate political theories. One group pretended to talk about Pope's "Dunciad" and really talked about whether Lady Chestworthy wore falsies. Those were the Tories. Another group pretended to talk about Locke's "Treatise" but really speculated about where Lord Bumgroper had picked up his dose of the clap. They were the Whigs. The chemically induced babble arising from the coffee glasses came in time to be known as "political discourse." Politics was all about what caffeine you ingested and, even more important, where you ingested it.

For the most part undergraduates, who seldom cross Nassau Street much before 11 a.m. — if indeed they ever cross it — are unaware of the finer points of Princeton's politico-caffeine cultures, which are best observed in the brief window between 7:50 and 8:10 a.m. This is the statutory hour at which the local chattering classes do their thing. Traditionally, there were four options. There are still technically three, but in fact only two.

Until fairly recently the best deal in town was the Senior Citizens' special at Burger King. For a while, a geriatric could get a cup of coffee for a quarter. And a refill came with that! It then went up to 40 cents, then very soon to 50 cents. We should have known that such giddy inflation was a harbinger of the imminent collapse that soon took place. It's a hard truth to learn that your hometown, which supports 37 boutiques selling velveteen tigers and Baccarat napkin rings at 4,000 percent markup, will drive a Burger King out of business. On the day the Whopper died, upper Nassau Street presented a scene straight out of "Panic in Needle Park." The place looked like a plowed-up anthill, with old guys milling about bereft and disconsolate before the padlocked doors. Most of them have never been seen again.

Starbucks is a theoretical possibility, but only theoretical. No serious local would ever go to Starbucks, since they know that Starbucks' only redeeming international social purpose, the validation of your Yuppihood, is so much better served just around the corner by Small World. There you will find the real deal. The number of G4 laptops is measurably larger, and the copies the "NY Review of Books" are sometimes even current. I know because a friend of mine and I save up our shekels and treat ourselves at Small World once a month. Of university folks, it's mainly President Tilghman and other scientists who go there regularly. They command salaries that make it possible to get a Double-Joe-to-Go on a habitual basis without taking out a second mortgage. Yes, at Small World the hyperactive young people behind the counters actually do call their exorbitant coffee "joe." They also use other quaint linguistic archaisms last encountered in the proletarian novels of James T. Farrell and John Dos Passos.

This leaves Olive's, further down Witherspoon Street. As they used to say about Forbes College, it's worth the walk. You get a really big cup for 95 cents and feel like a king when you tell them to keep the change. The scrumptious aroma of the baked goods comes gratis. The ladies of Olive's are really nice. On rare occasions the ancient cooler has insufficiently chilled the skim milk, but if it curdles they give you a new cup, no questions asked. But perhaps the best feature of Olive's, from the point of view of political discourse, is that it is cash-and-carry. There is no Jay-to-Stay. It's all Joe-to-Go. That is, since there is no place to sit in Olive's there are no annoying people sitting there. John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 professor of English. He can be reached at jfleming@princeton.edu. His column appears on Mondays.