PrintJuly 31, 2008
Red, white, and blue coffeehouse
In a welcome reversal of history, where coffee houses were associated with Beatnicks and then with Millenials, there is now a coffee shop opens for us conservatives.
There is now a cafe that serves up coffee with a "conservative flavor" in Crown Point, Indiana, suburb of Chicago. A picture of Ronald Reagan hangs on the wall.
A former art teacher came up with the idea after souring on Starbucks:
There is now a cafe that serves up coffee with a "conservative flavor" in Crown Point, Indiana, suburb of Chicago. A picture of Ronald Reagan hangs on the wall.
A former art teacher came up with the idea after souring on Starbucks:
He didn't like piped-in folk music, specialty drinks with faux-Italian names or patrons who frittered the hours away on laptops or listening to iPods. The atmosphere, he said, seemed an affront to Midwestern values he learned growing up in northwest Indiana.As his disdain for the coffee chains coincided with his fear of an erosion in national pride, Beckham made plans for the Conservative Cafe, an old-fashioned java joint near the Crown Point town square. There were two Starbucks within 3 miles of the shop, but Beckham and his wife, Jill, were convinced his pro-United States decor and Indiana roasted coffee would strike a chord with the community.
"We're trying to push back against the media and those in Europe who are anti-America," he said. "And it feels good to do it."
One customer said he did not feel comfortable in trendy coffeehouses.
He doesn't feel comfortable in trendier coffeehouses, where he sometimes doesn't recognize the music and often doesn't agree with the political conversations. He prefers the Conservative Cafe, where red-white-and-blue bunting hangs outside the brick building and patrons can buy T-shirts that read, "Silly liberal. . . . Paychecks are for Workers."
Discussions groups spring up during the showing of television talk shows (Fox News, of course).
We hope the cafe serves up beans from Columbia, our ally in South America beset by terrorism supported by Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales in Venezuela and Ecuador.
We wish the cafe the best of luck and hope its franchising hopes come to fruition.
