The Opinion team raises a mug to Kansas City, coffee shops and friendships | Opinion

Did you take a moment to go outside and enjoy a cup of iced coffee last weekend, the unofficial last “outdoor” holiday before fall? I did, drinking al fresco at one of my favorite java joints in Kansas City. Or did you immediately run out the moment the words “pumpkin,” “spice” and “latte” were said in the same sentence?

It surprises me that I even thought about it. I never used to drink coffee.

When I was a cub reporter back in Gary, Indiana, an equally young colleague walked up to me and offered me a cup of coffee. I declined.

“Thanks, but I don’t drink coffee,” I said politely.

“What?” he exclaimed. “What do you mean you don’t drink coffee? You’re a reporter. You have to like coffee!”

I put my foot down. “You can’t tell me what I have to drink. I will drink what I want,” I said, going on and on about how I love a nice hot cup of tea — with milk, English style — because that’s what my daddy served me growing up.

Guess what? Years later, I do drink coffee. (Don’t worry, Daddy, I still have a hot cup of Earl Grey with milk most days.)

If you would have made a bet with me back then, you’d be in the money. I swore I would never develop a taste for the dark brown stuff. Well, if you add enough cream and sugar, it’s pretty good.

I’m not a purist, safe to say. But in the throes of midafternoon, when I’m feeling a little weary, I’ll reach for a “cup of Joe” instead of a “cuppa.”

Which is why I find it fascinating to live in Kansas City. Sure, there’s decent coffee in the states I’ve lived — Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma and Texas.

But I’ve found that Kansas City and coffee have a deep-rooted connection of flavor, culture and friendship.

Team Joe: Our love of coffee shops

The Star opinion team has a fondness for coffee shops, especially small, independently owned ones. The ones that welcome lingering, reading and unofficial working spaces.

Back when I first worked for The Star, friends and I would frequent Broadway Cafe, a homey coffee joint that just felt different from the Starbucks that boldly moved in literally steps away on the corner. I wondered if the chain joint would sound the death knell for the local favorite. Nope. It did not.

“Starbucks left Westport a decade later, and Broadway Cafe is still going strong,” our bracket story reported.

I recently went back to Broadway Cafe, in business since 1992, with my husband. He had a caramel latte and I had a mango blackberry passion fruit iced tea that was so flavorful it didn’t need sugar. It was one of Kansas City’s miraculously pleasant August days (in a summer that’s been blistering hot) and we sat outside in one of the cafe’s several metal seating groups.

I watched so many people bump into someone they knew, serendipitously, I thought this must be a “mystery spot.”

The neighborhood is just conducive to that — walking, biking, and running into friends.

Broadway Roasting Company, one block north of Broadway Cafe in the old Westport Fire Station 19, is the coffee-roasting and delivery arm of Broadway Cafe. From the company’s website: “In 1998 we started roasting coffee for ourselves in the back of the Cafe. Within weeks, … began delivering coffee all over Kansas City.”

That’s another thing about Kansas City coffee: the collaborative spirit of companies like Broadway Roasting Company, Made in KC Cafe, and FairWave Specialty Coffee Collective. The collectives supply or support many of KC’s famous craft coffeehouses.

After Broadway, The Roasterie came on the scene a year later, 1993, in Kansas City. The Roasterie celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, and I remember smelling roasting coffee beans as I drove through certain neighborhoods around its headquarters. In some ways, it’s this coffee brand — with its Douglas DC-3 aircraft named Betty label — that has the most brand recognition for me.

Decades later, another KC java joint made its way to the scene.

My colleague, opinion writer Toriano Porter, recalls watching Messenger Coffee rise from the ground across the street from the old KC Star building on 18th and Grand. He, like me, was a coffee non-drinker until he tried the drip coffee over there. Porter boasts that the craft coffee shops in the KC area are second to none.

“The coffee roasters here locally, their skill and talent, can compete with any coffee roasters in the country,” Porter said, with a cup of coffee in his hand. Literally.

Brewing friendships in the neighborhood

Coffee can ignite friendships, too. Just look at Deputy Opinion Editor Derek Donovan’s humble KC coffee beginnings. He moved to Kansas City’s West 39th Street neighborhood in the mid-1990s and got his first job at The Star. Working overnight in the paper’s library, Donovan had a lot of time to kill during the day when friends were at work.

“I found a community of like-minded Gen Xers who congregated at Muddy’s Coffeehouse, then next door to Gilhoulys Bar at 39th and Bell,” Donovan said. Owners Oliver and Diane Burnette had started out with a storefront in the strip of shops at the west edge of the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus on 51st Street, before expanding to 39th and eventually a location at Westport and Main.

“And they often had a lot of customers to juggle. One afternoon, as Oliver scrubbed a panini grill and two baristas shuffled lattes and scones while the line stretched almost to the door, I joked that it was almost as if he was selling drugs.

“What do you think that caffeine in your coffee is? he replied, grinning.”

Donovan said the Burnettes sold the last Muddy’s to employees in 2011. But he still keeps tabs on Diane and family via Instagram, and he talks to a few of his Muddy’s friends regularly.

“I don’t know what it is about coffeehouse friendships,” Donovan said, “but I’m grateful for mine, and plan on hanging onto them as long as I can.”

I’m sure someone has counted the number of indie Kansas City coffee shops and those in the environs, but certainly not on one or even two hands, fingers and toes. Look around, I bet there’s one in your neighborhood, too.

Better get there quick, before all the pumpkin spice flavor is gone.