First Crack Podcast with Garrick Van Buren

On my daily walk this evening, I noticed a coffee shop here in St. Anthony Village was no longer. Based on the emptiness on the other side of the windows, it’s been a while since they left. While it’s always sad to see small, local, non-franchise, non-chain, coffee shops close - it’s also sad to see places with bad coffee and uncomfortable vibes stay open.

I remember a small local shop back in Evanston that always felt uncomfortable, had bad coffee, and finally used a Starbucks opening a couple blocks away as their excuse for closing. When in fact, any competition would have overtaken them.

On a related note, Marysburg Books and Coffee, in Minneapolis’ Warehouse District, where I recorded many of the First Crack Podcasts is also no longer. It appears they’ve succumbed to the new Dunn Bros across the street and the fantastically renovated Moose and Sadie’s.

Mostly unrelated, I received a brand new shipment of Indian Monsooned from Sweet Marias last week (can’t believe it’s been a week already). Just the smell of the raw, green beans, has powered me through this week. Can’t wait till I get a chance to roast them. It’s been so hot these past few days, I fear if I take them outside, they’ll roast on their own.

Lastly, the Giz Wiz Biz featured the Capresso CofeeTEAM Therm a couple days back (behold, the power of podcasting) which you can thank for inspiring this post.

Here’s the write-up from last December WCCO did on the issue. As much as I dislike Caribou’s coffee, I can’t see them setting out to kill “the dream”.

No, you’re not having de ja vu - Dave Winer has restarted the original community-based podcast directory. In the same spirit as the stale, defunct ipodder.org, but this time it’s over at podcasting.opml.org.

And yes, I pull the lastest PodcastMN list to fill out the Minnesota Podcasts branch.

Thanks Dave.