The future of coffee culture: Geneva or Athens?

File under: urbanism, intellectuals, coffee, Wellington

Saturday's Dominion Post had a thought-provoking article (page E10) by Eugene Doyle, entitled "Where are all the big ideas?" In it, he worries that while Wellington might be cultivating the outward signs of sophistication, it is losing its intellectual and political passion. He sees idealism and activism being steadily replaced by an obsession with "the clever and aesthetically pleasing". He sees Wellington's future as a choice between two cities:

"There is a bourgeois smugness that is creeping into Wellington that reminds me very much of another affluent, cultured, hill-bound city on the water's edge: Geneva."

or:

"Athens, another harbour city, influenced the world for centuries after it became militarily, economically and politically irrelevant. We shouldn't doubt either our intelligence or our ability to influence change. We should ... become what we have always been: a city of fierce citizens who seek to have an influence on the great issues of our time."

While it's easy to be cynical about a baby-boomer adman chiding us for not being more subversive (c.f. Peter Biggs, Kevin Roberts), Doyle does have a point, especially when he compares us to the (admittedly high) standards of London during the Enlightenment:

"Back in the 17th century, you could go into a coffee house in London and find Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley dissecting a dolphin on a table. You could do the same today in Wellington and find people dissecting the latest episode of CSI or The Biggest Loser."

Perhaps today's moral qualms and hygiene regulations, rather than intellectual desuetude, are behind the demise of tabletop cetacean experimentation (except perhaps in certain sushi bars). But the question remains: what happened to the place of the café in Wellington's intellectual discourse? Doyle's analogy between our changing taste in coffee and our lack of public intellectual rigour ("a city that figuratively and literally is putting too much milk and sugar in its coffee - we are diluting its strong, dark, subversive taste") is perhaps only half-serious, but it deserves investigation.

Have Wellington cafés become intellectually decaffeinated? If so, why? Here are some possible reasons for this apparent trend:

Dilution. Before the 80s, very few people hung out in coffee houses, and those that did were more likely to be radicals and intellectuals. Before Midnight Espresso opened in 1989, City Limits (now Finc) was the only café open after 5pm. Now that the streets are full of cafés, it's hardly likely that every single person cradling a latte is discussing politics or philosophy. The coffee shop intellectuals are still there, but they're harder to see.

Wider cultural change. Doyle rightly bemoans the fact that café conversations these days are likely to be about reality TV rather than abstract ideas. Maybe now that cafes are a more representative sample of (middle class) culture than they used to be, it's not surprising that café chatter is more representative of the Zeitgeist. If reality TV and selfish post-Rogernomics consumerism have dumbed down the culture as a whole, then it's not something specific to Wellington or to cafés, but a problem that the wider intellectual community has to grapple with.

Gentrification. Maybe radicals and artists can't afford to sit around drinking $3.50 lattes all day, so the fierce intellectual discussions now go on at gallery openings, dodgy pubs, anarchist community centres and private parties, if they haven't been driven out of the city altogether. Perhaps internet cafés are the last bastion of radical thought: The Cake Shop and Oblong come to mind.

Moving online. Perhaps blogs are the new coffee shops. Okay, it's hard to look at the comments on most political blogs and argue that these are paragons of civilised philosophical thought. But sites like Public Address provide a somewhat higher level of debate, and while I've posted my share of articles about the shallow consumerist side of Wellington, I like to think that WellUrban has also contributed a modicum of passion and intelligence to the discussion of big ideas such as sustainability, urban form and ethnic identity.

Nostalgia. Was café culture ever quite as dominantly radical as Doyle remembers? It's easy to look back upon our youth and recall the deep impassioned idealism of our discussions, but really: how much time was spent talking about apartheid and Vietnam, and how much about hairstyles and pop stars?

So, I'm not entirely convinced that Doyle is right, but since I still believe that cafés are a vital part of a city's cultural and intellectual infrastructure, I want to think about how they can stay that way. I'm guessing that my readers spend more time than most in Wellington cafés and bars, so here are a few questions I'd like to ask you all:

• What do you talk about over coffee? I'd like to think that all my conversations were about climate change, epistomology, Baudelaire and conceptual art, and many of them are, but I know that just as many of them are about nothing more profound than the quality of Martinis at the latest bar, who was the best Dr Who or which shop has the best cheese selection. So, do you have serious conversations at cafés, or is it all trivia and gossip?
• Can we have both? Is it possible to be have a city that's stylish and playful as well as political and intellectual?
• Which are the intellectual cafés? Where are there still scripts being written, revolutions fomented or scientific breakthroughs debated over a short black and a muffin?
• What can we do to maintain the place of cafés (and other public venues) in our intellectual as well as social lives? Arrange public events, such as poetry nights, scientific talks and political debates? Get together regularly with your friends with a specific topic in mind? Can institutions like universities, the Architectural Centre and the Royal Society do more to promote intelligent discussion as a part of urban life?
• Can cafés themselves do something to attract and provoke thoughtful conversation? If so, what would work? Filling the magazine rack with Nature and the TLS rather than Pavement and House and Garden? Playing Bach or Lilburn in the background rather than Ambient Chillout #87? Calling itself the Grecian, Le Procope or Village Vanguard to summon the ghosts of the Royal Society, philosophes and Beatniks? Running exhibitions of provocative and intelligent artwork rather than bland eye candy?
  
• Do we even need to bother? Should a café be a place to relax rather than to be stimulated?