CoffeeConnect

Discovering Chattanooga one cup at a time

Here’s the deal.  I will personally meet you at your favorite coffeehouse in Chattanooga and buy you your favorite cup of coffee if you agree to tell me about your Chattanooga for 5 minutes.  Or you may opt for popular plan B, let’s just have coffee and talk.  It’s all good.

• I’m new to Chattanooga and you’re not.
• You have your favorite local places. I have not.
• You know where to buy the best fresh bread in town. I know not.
• You are connected to many people locally. I hope to be.
• You’re very busy making Chattanooga what it is and will be. I am not. Yet.
• I love to meet new people. You are thirsty/sleepy/mentally blocked.
• So let’s make this a win-win proposition.

Leave a reply below and I will buy your favorite cup of coffee (or tea, chai, cocoa, etc.), from your favorite local coffeehouse (or teahouse, chaihouse, cocoahaus, etc.), share five minutes of pleasant, routine-breaking conversation with you, then disappear into the night, or day, in keeping with the situation.

In return I want to ask two questions: what is your favorite (fill in blank here) in Chattanooga? and what idea do you think Chattanooga needs?

That’s it in a nutshell. That should about take up five minutes surely, especially if you wax rhapsodic. If for some reason we finish early then feel free to get back to your important work and I’ll just stare at the local art they have hanging on the wall before quietly tiptoeing out.

Now the more clever, and, one might add, cynical of you might ask, “Hey, Christopher, what do you get out of this philanthropic act?” Well, of course there’s the aforementioned desire to meet new people and get to know my adopted hometown. But there’s also this, I want to gather your wise utterances and include them on this website so that others will better appreciate and more quickly aculturate into this great town. That’s just the kind of thing I do. I’m an inveterate idea person and this is the idea I came up with when my family and I decided to quit our jobs, sell most of what we have, and move here.

I would also like to include your name, photo, coffee and coffeehouse of choice on this website as part of the deal. Don’t worry though, if you don’t want your name and/or photo included I have that figured out as well. I’ll describe your face to my 6 year old son and then use the artwork he creates as your photo. It may not be of a human face but it will be colorful. He mentioned once that he’d like to be a police sketch artist so I can declare this as vocational training on my taxes. For your name I’ll just use a symbol, you know, kind of like the artist formerly known as Prince. That way no one needs to know about your little vacation from work.  This also applies to when I either forget to bring my camera or I forget to take your photo.

If you don’t have traditional waking hours or workplace we can still do this, but let’s still meet during the business day, I have a life too you know.

One last thing, if you are new to Chattanooga and want to be a part of this rather exceptional piece of performance art, contact me anyway and you can ask me a question or two that I will pass on to the more experienced Chattanoogans for their guidance to you and to others like you. If you’re unemployed then I’ll pick the coffeehouse but in exchange, you can tell me about your employment hopes and who knows, maybe I’ll be able to connect you to a local who can help. Now you can’t say fairer than that.

Now the legal stuff. I’m not rich, or employed for that matter, so there’s a limit to two people/coffees per visit. Let’s keep this to the actual, licensed coffeehouses during business hours shall we? Nuff said. Also regardless of how much you enjoyed my visit, you only get one shot at this offer. In other words I won’t come around every Thursday at 10:30 a.m. just to buy you a decaf caramel mocha with whip cream but hold the foam. The next cup’s on you.  Finally, allow for a little leeway in my arrival time. I’m unfamiliar with the vagaries of Chattanooga traffic patterns, parking, etc. That is after all one reason why I’m doing all this.  And in return I will allow for yours.

Remember, you provide the location and advice, I’ll provide the coffee and excuse. Thank you and see you soon.