Bean Counter Culture; A team of researchers wants to find out what we

ETHIOPIAN goats were the first to enjoy the stimulating effects of the coffee bean. It's not known how long they were keeping this pleasure a secret for themselves - possibly thousands of years - but the first recorded human consumer was a herdsman called Kaldi in 850 AD, who noticed that his usually indolent goats became profoundly frisky after eating the berries from a particular bush. So he ate a few himself, and a delicacy, an addiction, an industry was born.

We have since evolved into a coffee-freak species, now drinking nearly 500 billion cups a year and slamming a franchise coffee shop into every available commercial space on the planet (although the swollen, unregulated global coffee market is now crashing). And a group of Glasgow University geography students are about to use the recent coffee bar boom as a vehicle for anthropological study. Dr Mark Laurier and his team want to know exactly what's going on in coffee houses besides the grinding and roasting, whether these places are fulfilling a long lost need for comm-unity, or a new thirst for the exchange of ideas. They will spend the next two years observing regular customers in 12 coffee shops throughout the UK.

"We want to see how people interact," says Laurier. "Are they sharing tables, striking up conversations in the queue? And we'll be looking at what sort of cafes attract what sort of crowd. The main idea is to see how the cafe now fits into people's lives."

Believe it or not, there were more coffee houses in London in the 1680s then there are in today's Starbucks era. The joy of coffee eventually flowed into Europe through the port of Venice right between the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment, and cultured Europeans, giddy with ideas, dizzy with questions, had found the perfect fuel to put a quickening buzz on their brains and tongues. Coffee houses were meeting places, debating rooms, homes away from home, and away from the brutish, iniquitous atmosphere of taverns and gin dens.

Every social club, political faction, artistic movement, sect, cadre and cabal had their own designated assembly point to drink a roast and expound robustly on their chosen subjects. Books stacked up around the tables until these places were nicknamed "penny universities", after the cost of a cup. Edward Lloyd's coffee house, a hotspot for local merchants, eventually gave birth to Lloyd's bank. Jonathan's, a rowdy joint for brokers, became the London stock exchange.

Prodigious diarist Samuel Pepys, who drank coffee "upon necessity", proclaimed the houses "the sanctuary of health, the nursery of temperance, the delight of frugality, the academy of civility and free-school of ingenuity".

The British gradually lost, if not their taste for coffee, then their use for it as a focal point for group chatter and intrigue. But the American identikit chain bars have returned coffee to the centre of public life over the last 10 years. In any city you can sit in a busy, warmly generic coffee shop staring out the window and across the street into a rival franchise.

By asking what these places actually mean to us, Laurier is asking a pretty common question of modern commerce - whether these franchises exist to supply a demand or to create one. Do we really like coffee that much (most of the beans used in this country are the cheaper, lower quality Robusta type)? Is it that a coffee bar is a more healthy and cultured station between work and home than the pub could be? Is that idea in itself an affectation - the cafe corporations taking advantage of our old post-Renaissance impression that coffee confers a sort of urbane sophistication upon the drinker?

Or, to hyperbolise a little, is the coffee house really being reborn as a staging ground for a new form of civility? Or even a new Enlightenment? Over the course of one day (and the gradual intake of enough caffeine to reanimate a corpse) we trawled the coffee houses of Glasgow and Edinburgh to find evidence of some progressive stimulation Offshore, Gibson St, Glasgow This light, airy lounge full of oversized sofas sits right down the street from Glasgow University and should, in theory, be a hotbed of hyper-caffeinated student thinkers and guerrillas. It's not even nine in the morning, and the place is mostly empty. But manager Eve Pryde is familiar enough with the regular patrons to provide a breakdown of archetypes.

"Well, there's the philosophy students, with their books and hot chocolates. Music students have tutorials in here sometimes, they sing a bit and drink smoothies for their voices. And there is a bunch of militant marxists who come in. They get very heated, very gesticulative. They're a bit of a cliche I suppose."

Fragment of overheard conver-sation: "No, just stayed in last night, watched that programme with Ross Kemp, that SAS thing. Wow, violent. They had to shoot all these bank robbers in the mouth."

Tinderbox, Byres Rd, Glasgow Wood and chrome emporium for elaborate coffee products and sophisticated baked goods. This is the haunt of choice for the fashionable villagers of west end Glasgow, but there's no air of community in here - almost everyone is sitting alone, reading a paper or contemplating their foam.

Tinderbox does, however, provide a forum for the arts - hosting live music nights and stocking copies of the excellent comic book Too Much Coffee Man. And there is a certain bohemian vibe among the patrons. The guy next to me is on the phone trying to secure a PA system for the "BBC corporate gig" he and his band will be playing tonight. And two young ladies in trendy-gypsy clothes are debating Iraq in foreign accents.

Overheard conversation: "They've killed about 20 times as many with the sanctions, you know? It's just ridiculous. So hypocritical."

Beanscene, Ashton Lane,Glasgow Billed as a "coffee and music house", there's a sign outside inviting budding musicians to submit demo tapes of their "origonal [sic] acoustic tracks" for possible live showcases within. Inside, it's a heady brew of high and low culture. The Disney movie A Bug's Life is playing on the video screen, but the sound is drowned out by jazz. There are photos of Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed on the walls. On one side of me, two youngish men are re-living the hilariously incompetent performance of Aston Villa against Birmingham from the previous evening. On the other, two youngish women are talking non-sensically to a baby. And two students are playing chess in the corner.

"Aye, we play here a few times a week," says Paul Gilmour. "It's nice in here, chilled out. We're shite though." Indeed, after an oafish opening gambit, it's clear that neither of these boys is Bobby Fischer. Counter-lady Julia also says that "some of the regulars are film-makers and TV folk".

"They have meetings in here sometimes, or come in to write on their laptops."

Overheard conversation: "No, he's a wee prick. I've always thought that. Did you see him at Kenny's party?"

The Elephant House,George IV Bridge, Edinburgh An Edinburgh institution and an axis of enlightened thought, centred between the University, the Old College (spiritual home of David Hume), the high court and the local museums, libraries and theatres. It's no real surprise, then, when acting manager Erin Lister says "a lot of the regulars speak very politically in here".

"Very politically or very spiritually. Both ends of the spectrum really."

This morning in the famous back room - heavily decorated with elephant motifs and photos and paintings by local artists - it's cultured but quiet. Solo drinking, writing, crossword puzzling.

There is, however a debate raging at one table as to when the loose front tooth of young Kate Nichol will fall out. Kate herself says "it feels like it could come out any second". Her sister Jenny, however, says it probably won't happen until Sunday.

Her other sister Laura is more concerned about her homework assignment on King James VI, and tries to re-focus on the History of Scotland for Children. Commendable. Encouraging.

Overheard conversation: "Ugh, look! It's all wobbly! She can almost twist it all the way around!"

Valvona and Crolla,Leith Walk, Edinburgh Now this is the kind of community centre that could give Mark Laurier and his students enough material for a decade of study. The cafe at the back of this legendary emporium for obscure and delicate comestibles is packed with couples, groups and families in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, and the chatter is loud enough to drown out the opera playing in the background.

And apparently almost everyone is a regular. Mary Contini, who describes herself as "the boss's wife", says that "a lot of people have known the place for years."

"It's the kind of place where Lord and Lady So and So might start chatting to Mr and Mrs Bloggs. Mature students like to study here in the mornings, and the laptop people like to plug themselves in as well."

The back rooms are used every year as a venue for Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows, and the owners regularly host wine and cheese tastings, and "quite heated" debates with chefs and food writers. Listening to Contini, it seems like this is closest to the kind of coffee house that Samuel Pepys was talking about.

"People have started their careers here," she says. "Artists who we've displayed on our walls, and regulars who've started writing books because of chats they've had in here. It's quite an intense artistic environment." The coffee is excellent too.

Overheard conversation: "So, of course the volcano erupted when they were still inside, and this idiot had his skull fractured with the flying rocks. Some of the others were completely vapourised."

Starbucks, Royal Mile,Edinburgh It's the biggest cliche employed by the legions of Starbucks haters around the world, but this is far more of an antiseptic, fast food environment than some of the more personable independent coffee houses. The coffee itself is better than some, not as good as others, but profanely overpriced. There are a few business folk sitting around, a few tourists, a few teenagers - everybody is staring out the windows at the crowd.

The staff seem like nice enough kids. One of the "baristas", who didn't want to be named, said he would "no way" sit in Starbucks as a punter, and he has "never really overheard an interesting conversation in here".

Overheard conversation: "It was totally bloody obvious that it would go overbudget within the first few months."

Copyright 2002
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