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I recently had the pleasure of spending some quality time among the bean fiends at Ritual Roasters in San Francisco, a city which continues to charm me with each increasingly frequent visit. When I arrived on Friday night (back on July 20) Ritual was hosting the Bay Area ‘Spro Down*, closing shop early and packing the space with local coffee freaks to taste espresso, socialize, drink, and make mayhem. RitRo barista Chris Baca was the host of the bash and instigated a latte art smackdown which he (like previous smackdown impresario Kyle) preceded to win.

Most of the action for the night centered around the espresso machine.

The next morning was a Ritual bike race/fundraiser for Bikes To Rwanda.

Racers were loaded with 130lb bags of green coffee and biked the ~3 miles from Ritual on Valencia to the awesome new Ritual coffeebar at Flora Grubb Gardens on 3rd & Jerrold.

Bikes To Rwanda is the brainchild of Stumptown founder Duane Sorenson, who learned that the grower communities he works with there could benefit greatly from having bicycles to haul coffee cherry. The Portland bike community responded and 400 custom built bikes have already made it to Rwanda.

from the website:
These bikes were specifically designed with coffee cargo in mind. The bikes feature an elongated wheelbase, an integrated rack system that is two to three times as large as those bicycles available in Rwanda, powerful cable drawn brakes for safety, over-built wheels to handle at least 150 kilos and a low-geared shifting system to enable riders with large loads to overcome hills. These bikes are available to the co-op farmers for approximately $120 including shipping. Our goal is to raise the necessary funds to further subsidize the bicycles for the cooperative farmers.

This sort of DIY-style of program is really smart and inspiring. Ritual raised roughly $1300 from their event and is still accepting donations if you feel like sliding some extra bills across the counter during your next Mission district coffee break.

On the way back to L.A. I couldn’t resist the pull of another detour down Highway 1. I had to fight some stop-and-go traffic on the way there, but once I hit the ocean all road rage dissipated and the stopping and going was of my own design. Nearly every mile of that highway is jaw-droppingly beautiful. Its a road trip everyone should aim to take sometime in their lives, while we still have the filthy, faustian luxury of affordable fossil fuels.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Coffee, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.