SAILING INTO A LIFE WITH COFFEE
This column originally appeared on Wicked Local.

Sail Boston was coming to town July 10^th through the 12^th in 1992.  I remember because I picked up one of those promotional posters on the street that would commemorate the event and would, one day (as in now), be incredibly valuable.  This beautifully framed Sail Boston poster is still in my possession.  I know this because each time I open my storage closet at work I have to move it aside while trying to find something imminently more valuable, like my Banjo for Dummies book. 

My girlfriend and I were leaving town to avoid the crowds.  We were living in the North End, and as is often the case, most city people were happy to leave it whenever an event like this caused people from the suburbs to infiltrate, waiting in never-ending lines to charmingly dine on over-priced pasta. 

I made special plans for us to stay at the Woodstock Inn in New Hampshire.  It was a bed and breakfast, which meant that as soon as we entered, we were enthusiastically welcomed by the proprietors.  This was my first stay at a real bed and breakfast, so I found the whole experience to be rather awkward – as in, I was forced to pretend that I was interested in socializing with complete strangers, which I wasn’t.     I quickly warmed up to the idea when I realized that these people would be responsible for feeding me during our stay. 

We woke up the next morning and got ready for breakfast.  This meant preparing myself to engage in more “inane banter” (thank you, Russ Kenn) with random people that I was hesitant about knowing any better than I already did from the night before.  The worst part was that the only beverage they served with breakfast was coffee.  Coffee?  I didn’t drink coffee!  I was only 24 years old.  My significant other looked at me with that gaze that women give men when they know they are about to cause a really stupid scene in public when something is not going their way even though it is, in the grand scheme of things, remarkably minor and largely unimportant.  And besides, she told me that I would probably end up liking it.  I did what I had to do.  Morphing somewhat against my will into true adulthood, I acquiesced and politely said, “I’ll have the coffee, please.”  It was a sunny summer day, we ate an incredibly fancy breakfast (for someone whose idea of fancy meant the addition of raisin toast), and I drank coffee as my primary beverage for the very first time.  I was now part of The New Coffee Generation. 

For those of you who remember, a promotional campaign ran on all three television stations in 1984 celebrating The New Coffee Generation, otherwise known as the Coffee Achievers.  These ads, brought to us by the National Coffee Association (reminiscent of Mike Lindell’s My Pillow.com advertising pilgrimage currently jammed down our throats by the National Sleep Foundation), spotlighted NFL quarterback Ken Anderson, actress Cicely Tyson, rock legend David Bowie, and the band Heart who had largely (and I use that word loosely) been out of the public eye for several years as we entered the mid-1980s.  These ads promoted coffee, subliminally telling the viewing public that drinking coffee could give you “the time to dream it, and the vitality to do it.”   Each advertisement was accompanied by the music of the rock band ELO in the background singing their hit, Hold on Tight to Your Dreams, (which definitely says, “I would like to order a small regular with cream and sugar” if you play the song backwards).   They brought forth the message that if you believed it, you could achieve it, the historical parallel being JFK delivering his inaugural address belting out the words, “Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country” while heroically clutching a cup of Maxwell House. 

After an extremely delicious breakfast (along with coffee), my girlfriend and I went hiking and, truth be told, I had never felt better or more energized in my relatively short life.  I suggested that after casually strolling around Loon Mountain during the morning, we should perhaps attempt to scale the headwall at Tuckerman’s Ravine before lunch – walking on our hands.  Adding coffee to my morning routine was, indeed, a fine addition.  I wished that I had been turned on to coffee at a much earlier age – like kindergarten.

Coffee has remained a permanent part of my life.  My indoctrination into the realm of the New Coffee Generation, however, means that I was just an ever so small fish in a significantly larger marketing pool.  These Coffee Achievers took their mission very seriously in an effort to flood the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru lines spending roughly $1,320.80 a year on take-out coffee (at least if they ordered a medium regular from Dunkin Donuts twice a day, five days a week). 

The proverbial torch has, indeed, now been passed to a new generation of Americans with respect to coffee consumption.  But how did this paradigm shift occur?  Was the brief advertising campaign by the National Coffee Association in 1984 really powerful enough to make coffee drinkers out of an entirely new American demographic, or are there even more powerful marketing forces at work, the frequencies of which can only be heard by dogs?  We all carry cell phones today in the same way that everyone mysteriously had a Farrah Fawcett hairdo by the end of 1977 (and you know who you are).  Coffee, once considered a “social” drink exclusively for adults, is now a beverage that transcends the ages (and I mean that literally).  Everyone, it seems, is now buying and drinking coffee. 

This issue and more will be further explored in next week’s column, which will attempt to answer the following questions:  Who are the Coffee Achievers? Could Donald Trump have prevented them from entering the country if he had built a wall?  And, do members of the New Coffee Generation use MyPillow.com?

  -Jay Gillespie

Jay Gillespie has experience as a writer, comedian, musician, radio personality, and is a local history teacher.