I have been working from Not Just Coffee on South Tryon two mornings a week for about a year now. The flat white is the best in Charlotte. I will fight anyone about this.
The reason I keep going back, beyond the coffee, is that the woman who runs the morning shift, whose name I have learned is Christine, remembers what I order. Not in a "performative coffee shop friendliness" way. In a normal way. She nods when I walk in and starts the drink. We exchange about four words. I read for an hour. I leave.
I am not sure why this matters to me. I think it's that when you run a company you spend most of your day in conversations where the other person wants something from you, and a coffee shop where nobody wants anything from you is a place to think.
The brick wall is what sold it for me originally. I have a thing for old industrial buildings. South End is full of them now, half of them converted into things that did not exist there in 2014 when we moved.
Whitney has informed me that I have become "a regular," which she says with affection and also slight judgment. Fair.