Coffee has kept us together.
Dave, Grant, and I, professors at RIT, had for many years met regularly for coffee breaks on campus when, in winter 2020, COVID arrived and the world screeched to a halt. We were confined to home and teaching online.
We decided, since everything else was happening on Zoom, we would have virtual morning get-togethers over coffee and breakfast. This amounted to staring at one another on split screens and trying to maintain our usual jokey give-and-take. No surprise—it didn’t work.
Our solution was to meet weekly at the Village Bakery and Café on Culver Road—which, like so many eateries then, was open for take-out only—pick up coffee and breakfast, and sit around a table on the patio in the cold. We wore long underwear, heavy coats, gloves, and stocking caps. We moved furniture to stay in the sun or under an overhang when it snowed or sleeted. One time Dave brought a pop-up clear plastic bubble tent.
Customers walking to and from their cars would give us a thumbs up; some would stop and chat through face masks while maintaining social distancing. We became minor celebrities: the guys braving freezing temperatures to enjoy a coffee hour during the plague year.
We met at VBC for a while before deciding it was time to look elsewhere, seeking places with outdoor seating. We had plenty of spots to choose from.
Rochester is, no exaggeration, a coffee town. Home to a vibrant coffee culture, the city boasts more than 100 independent coffee shops. Many of these are what are known in the business as “third-wave” establishments, which typically source high-quality coffee beans and roast them to highlight unique flavors. They treat the coffee-making experience as an artisanal craft. Some local examples are Fuego Coffee Roasters, Joe Bean Coffee Roasters, and Albunn Coffee House. There are plenty of others.
First-wave coffees are commodities like Maxwell House that became popular in the early twentieth century. That period also saw the invention of instant coffee, prized by soldiers in WWI. The second wave rolled in around the 1970s and expanded into the 1980s with espresso-based drinks and flavored coffees: think Starbucks. The third wave came about with niche businesses in the last couple of decades.
Over the past six years we have gone each week to one of dozens of shops in the 585, usually in midmorning. Our system: We rotate responsibility for choosing a spot, and the chooser also pays the tab. That way each of us has two meetups without spending anything. This would be fair except that I usually don’t order anything other than cappuccinos, and Dave and Grant eat like they’re going to the chair: breakfast burritos, French toast, egg sandwiches. Once in awhile I have a scone to try to keep up.
One of our favorite places is Tree Town Café on Penfield Road in Brighton. There are picnic tables with umbrellas and a playground, which makes the place popular with young parents and toddlers as well as older people like us looking for outdoor seating. Inside where you order there is usually jazz playing.
While we were still focused on al fresco coffee hours, we also met at Melo Coffee & Kitchen on University Avenue a number of times. Melo is on the ground floor of the wedge-shaped Flatiron Building. There are plenty of tables on the sidewalk, and birds glide down from trees in search of crumbs. Where Tree Town has suburbanites, Melo has hipsters.
After these meetings became a regular part of our calendars, each of our significant others began to ask the same question: What do you guys find to talk about for an hour? Maybe they thought we would quickly run out of things to discuss.
The conversations have been all over the place: movies, music (Grant’s a musician, Dave an avid fan), books, grandchildren, retirement (me), travel, and politics. We nearly always talk about education because, well—professors. Lately we’ve fretted over the effects of artificial intelligence on teaching. And on writing!
A digression about artificial intelligence. Prompted with “Can AI replace the coffee hour?” a chatbot responded that it “cannot fully replace the coffee hour because it cannot replicate the human connection, emotional warmth, and community building central to the experience. Coffee hours are for human connection, not just consumption.” So, there’s one experience where AI hasn’t made inroads.
Besides, AI cannot reproduce the aroma of brewing coffee. Yet.
At the time our coffee outings started in 2020, Dave’s wife, Patti, was in the midst of a yearslong battle with cancer, and that was something we talked about with difficulty, as you can imagine. Grant and I would sometimes chat privately about how, or if, to broach the subject.
When Patti died, in the spring of 2022, we put our coffee hours on hold for a while.
But not for long. I suspect the klatsches were a way for Dave to get back to something like normal after years of living with dread. He spoke of the need to meet grief head on. Eventually he was talking about restarting his life in his early sixties, about taking a shot at dating, about meeting Lisa. Our conversations began to brighten again.
Around this time the pandemic was loosening its grip, and coffee shops started to welcome us inside again. Over the years we’ve met at Pearson’s off Park Avenue, Montgomery Court on Park Avenue, Steven James Coffee Co. in East Rochester, and Root 31 Café & Eatery in Pittsford Plaza. A favorite for its donuts and other baked delights is the family-owned Golden Harvest Bakery & Cafe, which is close to RIT.
Recently we discovered Elvio’s, a new Portuguese-inspired coffee shop on the southern end of Irondequoit Bay. There is live music on weekends, regular music-trivia contests, and the opportunity for customers to sing for discounted coffee. As I said, Grant is a musician who plays guitar and sings, so we thought, why not? One morning the manager set us up with a guitar and microphones; Grant played, and we sang three verses of Bob Dylan’s “The Weight.” A few customers sang along with the final chorus:
Take a load off, Fanny,
Take a load for free
Take a load off, Fanny,
And (and, and)
You put the load right on me
To our delight and astonishment, there was a smattering of applause.
As I write this, it’s spring in Rochester, people are outdoors again, and we’re looking for new places to enjoy coffee in the fresh air.
And there’s more: In April we attended Dave and Lisa’s wedding. When the reception was winding down, the three of us briefly came together—for coffee.
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2026 issue of (585).
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