The Black Warrior Files: Who’d Have Thought That Love Could Be So Caffeinated?

Tus • ca • loo • sa (tŭs'kə-lōō'sə) noun

1. An overly fashion-conscious, football-mad college town nestled in the big bend of the Black Warrior River. Established 1819. Population ≈ 80,000.
2. The home location for Scooter Nation (ironically lacking in scooters or any other fuel efficient vehicle).

[Origin: Choctaw/Native American black warrior; diriv. tushka, meaning warrior, and lusa, meaning black. For Choctaw Chief Tushkalusa, circa 1500s]

The city of Tuscaloosa has exactly one Quality Coffee Shop and I am currently sitting in it, as I tend to do, doing work on a Saturday afternoon and sipping a perfect sugar-free, fat-free latte (per Virtual’s individualized nutrition plan), or as Expat calls it, a Why Bother. At least, I tell him, it’s not a Super Why Bother. A Super Why Bother is sugar-free, fat-free, caffeine-free, and really, at that point, why bother indeed?

Sugar-free or not, Capture Studio Cafe makes the best lattes in town. This is partly because all of the baristas are arts and humanities majors or graduates; as we all know, a degree in the humanities develops excellent critical thinking skills and qualifies you to work one of three places: a coffee shop, an Italian restaurant, or a bookstore. The good lattes, however, are also largely due to the good coffee that the owner/proprietor of Capture, let’s call him Taylor the Latte Boy (TLB), uses in all of the shop’s coffee creations.

Now, Expat and I got all high on locally roasted coffee when we first moved to Madison and discovered Just Coffee. Local businesses could sponsor different kinds of roasts and, since Just Coffee is based in Madison, the roaster would roast them up, slap store-specific logos on them, and the sponsoring stores would sell them by the pound. The ACE Hardware on Willy Street was the place for the ACE Black and Tan blend. Jenny Street Market sold its great medium roast. Revolution Cycles peddled Revolution Roast, a dark, oily bean that made the whole house smell dark and nutty and warm. But good local coffee was just par for the course in Madison: every shop (and their were lots of shops), it seemed, marketed its own variety of locally roasted something-or-other, most of it fair trade, all of it 800 times tastier than the burnt-beans served up at the local Starbucks.

Fastforward. Scene change. Welcome to Tuscaloosa, Our Fair City, home to the University of Alabama, a mediocre SEC football team, no fewer than 15 barbeque purveyors, an oddly prevalent number of good consignment shops, and only four local coffee shops. Of the four, two are on The Strip, the major student area immediately off-campus, and are therefore Ridiculously Busy. One is an oddly Christian gifty-type shop just across the river in the neighboring community of Northport; it sells Foofy Coffee, big muffins, good shortbread cookies, and pretty much anything sterling silver that can be emblazoned with a cross. Which brings us back to Capture.

Capture started as a video production and photography company. It’s in the historic downtown part of Tuscaloosa in the bottom floor of an extremely cool historic 3-story, a little less than a mile away from The Strip, and a block away from the good consignment shop where we sometimes find Really Good Stuff for Really Cheap Prices. It’s too far for much undergraduate traffic but just right for professors and grad students who like working away from their desks. Now, I haven’t specifically asked TLB about the exact evolution, but to the best of my knowledge, the coffee shop was just a happy byproduct of having this company in this space in downtown Tuscaloosa, almost as if TLB and his crew of arts and humanities majors sat down, put their heads together and said hey, while we’re working on photos with these jittery brides or developing webpages for these hapless businessmen, why not ply them with a kicky atmosphere and some caffeinated goodness? Why not put our artistic talents to good use and come up with a clever urban logo and paint scheme and room design? Why not furnish the place completely in tables and chairs and couches from IKEA? And while we’re at it, let’s work up a good menu for that Panini press and oh, what the heck, let’s use some local, socially responsible coffee!

Higher Ground Roasters are located over in Leeds, Alabama, due east on I-20, in between Birmingham and Atlanta. They believe in buying fair trade, shade grown coffee at a fair price from farmers using sustainable farming practices. They sponsor local causes, like Black Warrior Riverkeeper and the local Literacy Council. Their goals, as stated by them: “To purchase the best coffee available anywhere, to roast it to perfection, and to make it available—fresh—to anyone.” That’s what Expat got excited about when he found their website one day up in Madison, while taking a break from packing. He had hitherto been making elaborate plans to keep our household well-stocked in Just Coffee—bringing a case of it with us, ordering it online, getting friends to ship it down on a regular basis, but one night he looked up from the laptop and smiled. “Honey, look! There’s a local coffee roaster in Alabama!”

“There is?!”

Having spent 12 of my formative years in the Heart of Dixie, I considered myself a fairly good authority on What Alabama Had and What Alabama Sure As Hell Had Not. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Alabama frequently gets a bad rap (yes, we have indoor plumbing—you’re thinking of Mississippi; no, we do not sit on our porches and play “Dueling Banjos”—you’re thinking of Georgia), but let’s be honest, Alabama—specifically Tuscaloosa—is not known as a major outpost of culture and open-minded social consciousness. By my reckoning, Alabama Had: barbeque; fried catfish; sweet tea; Republicans; guns; armadillos; banana pudding; Old Shitty Cars jacked up on New Giant Tires with Super Shiny Rims; katydids; roaches; water moccasins; Jesus; pickup trucks sporting decorative Rebel Flag frontplates, gun racks and multiple six-foot-tall antennas skewering paint-protecting tennis balls; Antebellum Houses with Large Porches; azaleas; SEC Football; Civil Rights museums; a boll weevil monument; peanuts; cotton; white sandy beaches; hurricanes; and a Small Contingent of Intelligent Liberals. Alabama Had Not: local coffee roasters; hybrid cars; Real Maple Syrup.

Yet here I sit on a blustery Alabama fall afternoon, drinking a warm Why Bother out of a kicky oversized mug, marveling at the tasty goodness of Capture’s fair trade house blend (Bolivian, medium roast).

Like I said, Quality.