Chango Coffee

I love my neighborhood.  Have I mentioned that any fewer than a hundred times yet?  I like to reiterate this every time some new thing tickles me, and today, I was kinda tickled.


I agreed to meet someone for coffee for a sort of business meeting/possible new friend/I don't know why we were really meeting but I obviously couldn't say no, and since I'm confined to my part of town all day every day because who want's to take the bus(?), I chose the only coffee shop I could think of.  Insert Chango Coffee.


This place is on our walk route so Dexter and I pass by on a regular basis and stop at the water bowl while I check out all the hipsters looking miserable, smoking cigarettes, wearing stupid hats and drinking coffee.  I've never actually stopped inside so when I suggested the place for the meeting I thought I should probably do my homework.  Yelp is the best place to go if you're looking for really jaded reviews of somewhere you thought you would like to go.  I found SO MANY bad reviews, and not just bad, terrible!  The kind of reviews where the reviewer gave one star because they had to in order to give a review.  Reviews slaughtering everything from the coffee and food to the service, decor, chalkboard menu, to even the hipsters sitting outside!  One reviewer said the guy working there hit her in the face with a bag of garbage on his way outside then told her she was in the way.  The reviews were so bad I just had to keep reading until my eyes burned.  Most of the reviews slashed the service, stating that you had to be a die hard hipster to even be looked in the eye, and even then they wouldn't be nice or give you any sort of courtesy.  


Don't worry, there were at least three good reviews in the lot of, oh, 70 bad ones.  So...what did I do?  I leashed up my dog and arrived promptly at 1:55 pm outside of Chango to wait for my meeting, duh.


Anyone who knows me knows that "hipster" isn't really a word that anyone would use to describe me.  Although...a hipster would never, EVER, admit to being a hipster...so who knows, maybe I am.  But probably not.  Hipsters are the people who live across the street who I am just completely amazed by on a daily basis.  I've mentioned these folks in previous posts, they are who I like to call Rock n Roll Hipsters, you'll never find a guitar or tambourine too far away from one of these guys.


Dexter and I finally make it to Chango after sniffing every damn thing we pass and peeing on every other thing we pass, petting Warrior, watching Warrior lick Dexter's face, and making new friends at the dog store.  I decided to wait on the corner so my new friend could see me from whichever direction she was coming from.  The first person I see inside Chango is, guess who, one of my Rock n Roll Hipster neighbors!  I think he works there but was just hanging out because he came outside to drink his coffee and smoke cigarettes in a stupid hat.  He smiled and said hello on his way past (we've never formally met).  Then out came the guy who was working there, he was super friendly and stopped to pet Dexter and tell me how healthy and happy my dog looks.  Everyone else who was sitting outside said hello and pet Dexter and let him lick their toes and sniff out their dog with the creepy blue cataract eyes.


Why was everyone being so damn nice?  Why did the disgruntled hipster barista smile AND talk to me? What was going on here?  The coffee had better be burned and terrible and taste like mud or I'm going home.


Skip to my friend arriving, soy latte placed in front of my face, Dexter on my lap... and... hey, this latte is delicious!  Once again (and again, and again, and again) Yelp got it wrong.  Because Yelp sucks.  Realistically it's the losers who posted the reviews who suck, but I have a small hatred for Yelp due to past experiences, so I'll just go ahead and blame them.


I will definitely go to Chango again.  I loved it there.  If I were to leave a review, which I won't, I would give it 5 stars.  And this just adds another star to my neighborhood because now I know that my stupid Rock n Roll Hipster neighbors are actually really nice and I know where I can get a good soy latte when the need strikes.  And I'm not even a hipster!  Who knew such luck would strike!