Anyone who's ever lived in the San Francisco Bay Area has an experience with Peet's. Based in Berkeley, Peet's offered up the darkest, thickest, most hard-core cup of coffee you've ever tasted. It was a cup of joe guaranteed to make a man of you.
In a region where cafe life is a religion, Peet's was a cult.
I myself wasn't an acolyte. I appreciated its reputation, though, and I admired its fans. Honestly I could hardly take the stuff myself. I had to cut it by half with milk and even then it was too strong by half. I'm more of a diner-style cuppa gal myself. Still, drinking it was a point of pride. If I had to choose between a Starbucks and a Peet's, I'd always choose the latter. The Bay Area was my home for 20 years, after all. And Berkeley for four of those years.
Today comes news that Alfred Peet, the dutch immigrant behind the Peet's experience, has died. He was 87.
Go out and get some if you can. Drink it neat. To paraphrase Prof. Stafford Gregoire, a die-hard Peet's fan who I know is out in New York sitting Shiva over this turn of events, "I like my coffee like I like my women: black and bitter." Remember the man who helped start the coffee revolution, right there in Berkeley.
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