S.F. Wrestler, Coffee With Daisy, Luv Her Like Crazee

The aroma is not similar to the international smell floating around in Starbucks. The scenery is not comparable to where you took your first date. It’s not a place to people watch unless you like sightseeing bodies on the downhill slide.

You won’t find a lot of cool yuppies or hot chicks there either.

What you will find is Al Pacino and Robert De Niro creating the best cup of coffee scene that may have ever existed on film in the 1995 masterful non-stop energy packed classic, HEAT.

The coffee’s not bad either.

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee…..…………Abraham Lincoln

In real life?

I like the coffee shop scene where I was sitting in San Jose with Daisy Ducati.

This is important to remember. In those scenes?

Always bring your A game.

The place was nicely decorated, neighborhood friendly, filled with exquisite coffee smells and best of all, Daisy Ducati was sitting across from me.

As a grappler, she does what she does best. As a Femcompetitor Magazine Writer, I do what I do best.

Fortunately for me, unlike Pacino’s cop character, I don’t have to take her down.

Though I have thought about that often.

So have you. Right?

We were to have a nice relaxing conversation before a wrestling shoot. What more could you want with your morning coffee.

I force people to have coffee with me, just because I don’t trust that a friendship can be maintained without any other senses besides a computer or cellphone screen.….John Cusack

I wondered if she liked your typical coffee hang outs and she smiles and replies, “As far as coffee shops I’m kinda picky since I’m sort of a coffee snob.”

So I wondered if that means she would go days or weeks without her coffee fix because the taste buds don’t match the java. “I like coffee that’s freshly roasted so I seek out unusual coffee places but sometimes anything will do as long as you get the caffeine fix.”

How does a coffee snob find all of these great places to sip and chat?

Daisy knows and she enlightens, “I usually look it up on my phone and try to see what’s around. I try and see if I recognize the names.”

There was a slight interruption in our conversation and I thought of HEAT……..again.

There were classic lines in the dingy coffee shop that just kept rolling in. Sometimes I lament the could haves, should haves and would haves in my often disappointing life and then I hear a line like this one from Pacino’s character and I think maybe my life past and present is not so bad.

He say’s “I got a wife. We’re passing each other on the down slope of a marriage. My third. Because I spend all my time chasing guys like you around the block. That’s my life.”

The great penetrating review Roger Ebert provides us with the foundation of that cup of coffee timeless banter. “De Niro and Pacino, veterans of so many great films in the crime genre, have by now spent more time playing cops and thieves than most cops and thieves have.

There is a sequence at the center of Michael Mann’s “Heat” that illuminates the movie’s real subject. As it begins, a Los Angeles police detective named Hanna (Al Pacino) has been tracking a high-level thief named McCauley (Robert De Niro) for days. McCauley is smart and wary and seems impossible to trap. So, one evening, tailing McCauley’s car, Hanna turns on the flashers and pulls him over.

McCauley carefully shifts the loaded gun he is carrying. He waits in his car. Hanna approaches it and says, “What do you say I buy you a cup of coffee?” McCauley says that sounds like a good idea.

The two men sit across from each other at a Formica table in a diner: Middle-aged, weary, with too much experience in their lines of work, they know exactly what they represent to one other, but for this moment of truce they drink their coffee.”

So many moments in most of our lives become timeless when we have coffee with a loved one or a group of friends. It’s just liquid in a cup but not only does it seem to open up our minds but our hearts as well.

I am a coffee fanatic. Once you go to proper coffee, you can’t go back. You cannot go back…..Hugh Laurie

I look back over at Daisy, savor the moment and ask her about the different cities or countries where she has had some coffee that hit the spot. She ponders, “Jamaica is known for that Blue Mountain coffee that’s mostly exported, not really served fresh but it was okay. A lot of the restaurants had pretty decent coffee.

I think Portland was a lot of fun. There were a lot of cool places to go and cool people to interact with. It’s a very social city.”

Ah, wonderful Portland. It is one of the greatest, quiet cities in America. There’s the fresh air, majestic Pacific and in many places, some fascinating counter culture people amid the artistic city scape.

I love being around young beautiful women who avoid the 9 to 5 gig. They are just plain different. I still remember the Marlo Thomas scenes in her TV show That Girl, where she’s the single girl who took a risk and is trying to make her way in the big bad apple of New York City.

Make it she does. She shines with huge New York smiles.

Daisy is a city girl.

She loves living in artistic and free Frisco where there is virtually never a dull moment. I ask her about that. Portland is a great people watching city. She smiles with a broad San Francisco smile, “San Francisco is another city to go out and people watch as well. I’ve been here for 9 years and still haven’t had a car. I’ve often had groceries delivered. Even delivered through a supermarket it’s like 10 dollars.

I’m definitely a city person. I like being able to walk out and have things right there. Everything that I want to do and go out and be able to quickly find friends.

I’m still trying to get used to going green. Where I’m from I was like the only person in town that recycled.”

Sounds good.

What about that Portland place? What are a few good coffee shops there?

The fresh and informative site oregonlive.com is very hospitable. In between sips they share three among many.

1. “The friendly folks at Coava are all about two things: craft and hospitality. Their coffee buyers travel the world learning about farming practices, soil, and production methods to bring the best tasting coffee they can find home to their community. The shop itself is a welcoming space designed for coffee lovers to come together, united in their appreciation for the perfect bean. Coava is also committed to partnering with other coffee shops around the country, helping small businesses expand and succeed.”
2. “Serving three locations throughout Portland, Barista’s owner, Billy Wilson, is barista royalty in the Pacific Northwest, having won three Northwest Barista Championship titles. His coffee shops focus on showcasing obscure and out of town roasters, giving the little guys a chance and breaking from the norm. In addition to delicious coffee, Barista also serves pastries from Food and Wine’s Best New Chef Nominee Joshua McFadden’s Roman Candle Baking Co.”
3. “Heart Roasters owns two beautifully minimalist locations in both East and West Portland where they serve up their Thrive Farmer’s Good Food Award-winning house roasted coffee. But they’re also willing to ship their beans around the country; they even sell the same equipment they use to brew their coffee on their website. Their shops are as sophisticated as their flavors, with Scandinavian chic décor and an in-house DJ on Friday afternoons.”  

When you read the article, there are many more. It’s worth checking out.

http://www.oregonlive.com/dining/index.ssf/2014/04/three_portland_cafes_land_on_l.html

Daisy and I finally left to drive to the wrestling shoot. It was a really nice memorable moment.

Why are coffee shop sit downs filled with a range of tastes and emotions? I think Roger Ebert analyzes it well as he so often does. Summarizing the Pacino, De Niro social mirror he softly explains, “It’s not just an action picture. Above all, the dialogue is complex enough to allow the characters to say what they’re thinking: They are eloquent, insightful, fanciful, poetic when necessary. They’re not trapped with clichés.”

Once you wake up and smell the coffee, it’s hard to go back to sleep.……Fran Drescher

Here is the point.

“Of the many imprisonments possible in our world, one of the worst must be to be inarticulate – to be unable to tell another person what you really feel. These characters can do that.”

I sense that’s why we love coffee shops. For moments in time, it allows us to articulate the words we really want to say where as other settings would render us speechless, constrained or distracted.

At the coffee shop, like that day for me with Daisy, we can be who we want to be and for a moment in time, have our emotional valves opened wide to say it articulately.

Coffee with Daisy.

Luv her like Crazee.

~ ~ ~

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Sources: brainyquote.com, Wikipedia, fciwomenswrestling.com, fciwomenswrestling2.com, FCI Elite Competitor, https://femcompetitor.com, photos thank you Wikimedia Commons.

http://sonnycrockettfan.blogspot.com/2012/04/heat-restaurant-scene-dialogue.html

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/heat-1995

http://www.travelportland.com/article/downtown-portland-coffee-crawl/

http://www.oregonlive.com/dining/index.ssf/2014/04/three_portland_cafes_land_on_l.html