咖啡店

The traditional tale of the origins of Viennese coffeehouses begins from the mysterious sacks of green beans left behind when the Turks were defeated in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. All the sacks full of coffee were granted to the victorious Polish king Jan III Sobieski, who in turn gave them to one of his officers, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki. Kulczycki began the first coffeehouse in Vienna with the hoard. It has the ring of apocrypha to skeptics who find the story too pat— and the date too late.

In the 16th century there were coffee houses in Istanbul, Cairo and Mecca, and in the 17th century coffeehouses opened for the first time in Europe. Coffeehouses first became popular in Europe upon the introduction of coffee in the 17th century. The first Turkish coffeehouse in England was set up in Oxford by one Jacob or Jacobs, a Turkish Jew, in 1650. The first coffeehouse in London was opened two years later in St. Michael's Alley in Cornhill. The proprietor was Pasqua Rosée, the Ragusan servant of a trader in Turkish goods named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment [1]. Boston had its first in 1670, and Paris in 1671. The Cafe Le Procope [2], which was founded in Paris in 1689, is still in business: it was a major locus of the French Enlightenment, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot used to frequent it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia.

Though Charles II later tried to suppress the London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public flocked to them. They were great social levellers, open to all (except, generally, women), and as a result associated with equality and republicanism. More generally, coffee houses became meeting places where business could be carried on, news exchanged and the gazettes read. Lloyd's of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd, where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business. By 1739 there were 551 coffeehouses in London, including meeting places for Tories and Whigs, people of fashion or the "cits" of the old city center, coffeehouses known as gathering-places for the wits or for stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors. According to one French visitor, the Abbé Prévost, coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government," were the "seats of English liberty."

Ladies were not permitted in coffeehouses. In a well-known engraving of a Parisian coffeehouse of c 1700, the gentlemen hang their hats on pegs and sit at long communal tables strewn with papers and writing implements. Coffeepots are ranged at an open fire, with a hanging cauldron of boiling water. The only woman present presides, decently separated in a canopied booth, whence she doles out coffee in tall cups.

In London, coffeehouses preceded the club of the mid-18th century, which skimmed away some of the more aristocratic clientele. Jonathan's Coffee-House in 1698 saw the listing of stock and commodity prices that evolved into the London Stock Exchange. Auctions in salesrooms attached to coffeehouses provided the start for the great auction houses of Sotheby's and Christie's. In New York the Tontine Coffeehouse at the foot of Wall Street near the docks became a central meeting place. In small cities a coffeehouse functioned as a place where messages might be left and picked up. American coffee shops are also often connected with indie, jazz and acoustic music, and will often have them playing either live or recorded in their shops.

[编辑] Contemporary coffeehouses

The current spate of chain coffee shops such as Starbucks, Peet's, Seattle's Best Coffee, The Coffee Bean and Second Cup have a clear lineal descent from the espresso and pastry centered Italian coffeehouses of the Italian-American immigrant communities in the major US cities, notably New York City's Little Italy and Greenwich Village, Boston's North End, and San Francisco's North Beach. Both Greenwich Village and North Beach were major haunts of the Beats, who became highly identified with these coffeehouses. As the youth culture of the 1960s evolved, non-Italians consciously copied these coffeehouses. Before the rise of the Seattle-based Starbucks chain, Seattle and other parts of the Pacific Northwest had a thriving countercultural coffeehouse scene; Starbucks standardized and mainstreamed this model.

The liquor laws in the United States prevent anyone under the age of 21 from entering a bar, so coffeehouses are sometimes youth gathering places.

Since approximately the Beat era, the term "coffeehouse" has come to imply the availability of espresso drinks, while "coffee shop" suggests a diner where coffee is also served.

A counter clerk in a coffeehouse has come to be known in English as a barista, from the Italian word for bartender.

The contemporary coffeehouse is just the latest example of a drinking establishment—bars, public houses, taverns and soda shops have also served this purpose—as the center for cultural exchange in a particular community, often fomenting social and political change. See, for example, the meetings of the Sons of Liberty of the American Revolution and the abortive Beer Hall Putsch by the German Nazi party in 1923.

[编辑] Contemporary cafés

In the United States, café (from the French word for coffee) is a small restaurant. Styles of cafés vary; some concentrate upon many styles of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, with possibly a selection of baked goods and sandwiches, while others offer full menus. American cafés may or may not serve alcoholic beverages, and the serving of coffee may be incidental to the serving of food.

In France, a "café" certainly serves alcoholic beverages. French cafés also often serve simple snacks (sandwiches etc...). They may or may not have a restaurant section. A brasserie is a café that serves meals, generally single dishes, in a more relaxed setting than a restaurant. A "bistro" is a café / restaurant, especially in Paris. Bistro food is supposed to be cheap, but in recent years bistros, especially in Paris, have become increasingly expensive.

Cafés developed from the coffeehouses that became popular in Europe upon the introduction of coffee. Those also spawned another, completely different type of restaurant, the cafeteria.

There are two types of cafés: those that specialize in coffee and hot beverages, and those with a full menu, the most famous examples of which are the "French cafés," especially those in Paris.

Cafés, in warmer days, may have an outdoor part (terrace, pavement or sidewalk café) with seats, tables and parasols. This is especially the case with European cafés. See also public space.

Cafés offer a more open public space to many of the traditional pubs they have replaced, which were more male dominated with a focus on drinking alcohol. Many people complain that traditional, local venues are being pushed out by cloned, characterless cafes controlled by big business. This is often due to the business practices of chains such as Starbucks, which will oversaturate an area so as to drive overall profits up while lowering the profits of individual establishments.

The original uses of the cafe, as a place for information exchange and communication was reintroduced in the 1990s with the Internet cafe. The spread of modern style cafes to many places, urban and rural, went hand in hand with computers. Computers and Internet access in contemporary-styled venue is a youthful, modern, outward-looking place, compared to the traditional pubs, or old-fashioned diners that they replaced. In the mid 2000s, of course, many mainstream cafes offer Internet access, just as they offer telephones and newspapers.

[编辑] Cannabis coffee shops

A coffee shop in Amsterdam, selling coffee and cannabis.

Some coffee shops, however, especially in the Netherlands, are places where selling of cannabis for personal consumption by the public is tolerated by the local authorities. Any establishment advertising itself as a "coffeeshop" (as opposed to a café) in the Netherlands is likely primarily in the business of selling cannabis products and possibly other substances which are tolerated under the drug policy of the Netherlands.

In the Netherlands, the selling of cannabis is tolerated (NL: gedoogd) by officials, so the law is not enforced in establishments following these nationwide general rules:

• (a) no advertising
• (b) no hard drug sales on the premises
• (c) no sales to minors
• (d) no sales transactions exceeding the quantity threshold
• (e) no public disturbances

With the exception of advertising and alcohol, these restrictions are controlled very fiercely. An owner can have his business closed for three months for some offences, closed outright for others. There is a further on-going contradiction, as a coffeshop is tolerated to sell, but not to buy ("The frontdoor is open, but the backdoor is illegal"). There is as of January, 2006 proposed legislation to remedy this.

At least two coffeehouses (as of 2001) are also licensed for liquor, with the notion that the sale of cannabis is to happen at a different counter (though it may be smoked at the bar). Most coffeehouses advertise, and the constraint is more modulating that outright prohibitive. In a charming gesture of discretion still technically required, many coffeehouses keep the cannabis menu below the counter, even when the cannabis itself is in more-or-less plain view. Dutch coffee shops often fly red-yellow-green Ethiopian flags or other symbols of the Rastafari movement to indicate that they sell cannabis, as a consequence of the official ban on direct advertising. This aesthetic attracted many public artists who get commissions to create murals in the coffee shops and use the Rastafari and reggae related imagery to provoke public discussion about racial and multicultural issues.

Any shop selling soft drugs to minors or selling hard drugs at all is immediately closed. These institutions provide non-contaminated (and hence relatively safe) cannabis products, which may not be true of dealers acting illegally. Cannabis and any food products containing cannabis are generally clearly identified to prevent accidental consumption.

In the Netherlands, a koffiehuis resembles more so a coffee shop in the U.S., whilst a café is the equivalent of a bar.

Each municipalitiy has a coffee shop policy. For some this is a "zero policy", i.e. they do not allow any. Most of such municipalities are either controlled by strict Protestant parties, or are bordering Belgium and Germany and simply do not wish to receive "drug tourism" from those countries. A March 19, 2005 article in the Observer noted that the number of Dutch cannabis coffeehouses had dropped from 1,500 to 750 over the previous five years, largely due to pressure from the conservative coalition government [3]. The "no-growth" policies of many Dutch cities affect new licensing. This policy slowly reduces the number of coffeeshops, since no one can open a new one after a closure.

In nearby Denmark it seems that the coffee shops in the Freetown Christiania will be abolished in 2005 or 2006, as part of the wider issues involved with Free Christiania.

Despite Canadian laws forbiding its non-medical use, some cities and local law enforcement have, at times, tolerated coffee shops which encourage customers to smoke cannabis. In Vancouver, for example, the New Amsterdam and Blunt Brothers were cafes on West Hastings Street with such pro-cannabis policies in the late 1990s and early 2000s.