Welcome friends.

Do you like coffee? I do. I like tea, too, but that’s not the reason I started CoffeeHouses.org.

I love third places. What’s a third place, you ask? There are many definitions of a third place, but the one I like best is this; A third place is a place that’s not home (first place) or work (second place) but somewhere else you can go to hang out and socialize. That’s about the simplest way to put it, and the most common third places in America are coffee houses and the occasional bookstore. A great book that talks a lot about third places is The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community by Ray Oldenburg.

This site offers a directory and review of coffee houses, a.k.a. third places. The directory is quite simply a review of places that I’ve visited. I try to share information about the coffee house, its amenities, my experience there, and things like whether they roast their own beans, sell art by local artists, sell free-trade coffee, blend their own teas, or have free Wi-Fi.

While I’d love to spend a couple of years just going around the world to every coffee house I can, it’s logistically difficult, to say the least. In addition to my own reviews, I hope to enlist the help of some good friends and future friends to help me provide more content by writing reviews of their own.

I’m just getting started out here and hope you enjoy your visit.

Thank you, and enjoy your visit.

Brian
January 2014