The problem with your coffee

Make no mistake. I love coffee. I drink it just about every day. I don’t think I am dependent on it, as people will often claim to be. I can go several days without it and see no discernible difference in my body’s general state nor my mind’s. I do not feel physically better after having a cup. I simply enjoy drinking it. I also enjoy making it.

I drink it black, as it should be, and without any added froth, sweetener, or the good mojo that your favorite barista might magically make you think you’ve gotten. In fact, the vast majority of the coffee I drink, approaching 100%, is brewed by yours truly. In my office. By a small, 4-cup, basket-filter, Mr. Coffee Brand™ coffee maker. It’s quite simple. I buy the beans from Costco, in a 2-pound bag that is roasted, I believe, on-site by the Costco coffee roaster guy. I use the Costco-provided grinders to grind the beans before they are actually purchased. I store the bag in a drawer in my office. I do not measure out the amount of coffee used other than with my eyes. And it tastes great every single time.

My coffee maker: This coffee maker saves me thousands of dollars. Photo by Ryan Jerz.I do all of the above for these reasons:

1. It is cheap. I pay < $10 for the two-pound bag, which lasts a long time. I have never paid attention to how long it lasts, but I’m willing to bet it’s > 5 days, which is how long it would take me to spend that amount if I bought it at a coffee place.
2. It is easy. Granted, I have to fill up the 4-cup carafe with water and walk that back to the office. Oh, and then I have to separate the filter from all the other filters. Sometimes two get stuck and I have to do it twice. Then I have to pour the coffee in there to what I deem to be the appropriate height and somehow manage to get the full filter of coffee back into the little basket without spilling. Somehow, I pull it off.
3. It is nearby and convenient. It’s in my office. I do not have to leave my office to get it. I do not have to find parking on my way to work to get it. I do not have to tell anyone what I want. I do not have to grapple with it potentially spilling on me while I drive to drink it.
4. It is sustainable. I reuse one cup over and over and over and over. I do not have to remember said cup, as it is already in my office. I do not have to use a paper cup because I forgot my cup. I do not have to drive one block or two blocks or three blocks or any blocks out of my way on the way to work to acquire the coffee. I buy organically-grown, fair-trade (when available) locally-roasted coffee every time. I would compost the grains, except I don’t compost at all. Neither does any coffee shop I’ve ever heard of. It heats the water as it’s used and not overnight when my office is dark and locked. Grinding the beans all at once is more efficient than grinding them as they are needed (I dare you to time the amount of time you spend with the grinder on through a full 2-pound bag of coffee).
5. It tastes wonderful. How much more needs to be said?

So how is this a problem? It’s not—for me. I don’t subscribe to the Coffee Experience™ thing. You know, that thing where you drink coffee bought from the local shop because it’s local and indie and local and hip and local. A major part of the problem I have with it is that it’s a lie. It’s like how Trader Joe’s got second in a local weekly’s Best of for the “Independent Grocery Store” (Trader Joe’s is not local in any sense of the word, at least in this country). These places are considered local because the owner happens to live around here. You might know the people who work there. Maybe they get their beans from a local roaster. And they certainly feel local because they want you to think that way. That’s what Trader Joe’s does, too. But they’re not doing that because they thought of it. Oh no. They do that because another company paved the way for them to be able to sell their ridiculously overpriced coffee in their shops teeming with riser-bike dudes. That company: Starbucks.

Yes, the very bane of the indie coffee shop regular is the company that made the indie coffee shop possible to begin with. In Reno, anyway. I frankly don’t care about that one coffee shop you know of in Portland that has been around forever blah blah blah. The entire culture in this town that I have to deal with on a daily basis is the spawn of Starbucks—yet it stops at nothing to try to tear Starbucks down. It’s too corporate. It’s generic. It’s EVIL. Whatever the rolled-up pants leg, part-time artist/indielocal coffee shop employee tells you, right? Yeah, well let’s think about this, shall we?

Starbucks might be corporate, but I can’t actually argue that’s bad. They pay their employees better than probably every other coffee shop in town. And they give them benefits. Time off. Health insurance. Education reimbursement. People skills. It is never a place that you might feel under-cool going.

Starbucks might be generic. Another word for that is “consistent.” You know what you’re going to get there. It may not be the best coffee you’ve ever had, but it’s good. And I happen to believe that coffee is something that falls under the Law of Diminishing Returns. That is, once the coffee hits a certain level of quality, it’s economically unfeasible to continue trying to get better coffee. It very definitely can be “good enough.” Frankly, Starbucks is at least good enough. Driving out of the way to get that “best” cup of coffee just isn’t worth it.

Starbucks is most definitely not EVIL. In fact, around here Starbucks might very well fall under the “good” column. They have a roasting plant just about an hour’s drive from Reno and employ a lot of folks there. Wait a minute. That means that they not only are a major employer in the area, but their beans are also local. And spare me the “yeah well they’re not grown locally” garbage. As far as anyone knows, they’re not growing coffee beans in Washoe Valley that could possibly supply one indie, barely staying open coffee place. Everybody’s beans are grown far away. Like in another country. So that whole “getting your beans from local suppliers” thing is out the window. Bummer.

I wasn’t here today to convince anyone that Starbucks was good for them. I didn’t even mean to defend them. But I think I’ve laid out a decent case as to why they might be worth not discounting in the world of coffee joints. But that’s not even something I care about. What I care about are the people who take time out of their day to feed me mouthfuls about why their coffee place is superior to every other coffee place. People, it’s coffee. I make it every day. The cost (in time, energy, and cash) is very minimal. It’s possible to make a damn good cup right in the very office I spend the rest of my day in. Who cares if your coffee place is “better,” “hipper,” “localer?” I don’t. And trust me—neither do a lot of other people. It’s COFFEE.

The Jerz archives: Raccoons in the RGJ

I think what I like most about this raccoon story is that I’m in there in a way that basically contributes nothing except sensationalism. And it’s not like it’s out of context or anything, either. I basically just told my stories to the reporter, and he used the pieces that fit. In true RGJ fashion, the comments are a train wreck with morons fighting one another over their raccoon knowledge.

So long tourism; Hello athletics!

After finishing my degree, or probably well before finishing, I realized that my limitations weren’t going to allow me to find a job doing what I felt like I was meant to do. I had to look elsewhere. And I did. What I found, amazingly, was that I could do what I was meant to do, but I had to do it under an umbrella that I was previously offended by: marketing.

How would you handle violations of photo rights?

The image above is mine.

I shot it almost exactly four years ago for potential use on a postcard or something like that for the Nevada Alumni Association, which is who Christy works for. I wasn’t paid. I was actually just happy to have access to the cannon without interference and with the ability to do whatever I wanted with it. I went home that evening and edited and uploaded the shot to Flickr.

Since that time, this shot has become sort of iconic. I see it pop up all over the place when I see articles about the cannon or groups on Facebook having to do with the Nevada-UNLV rivalry. I put it on Wikipedia myself, even having to battle moderators there to keep it up. They thought I had violated copyright by uploading it and I had to convince them I was the same person who took the photo and attached the rights to it originally.

I haven’t spent a lot of time researching it (read: none), but it appears that the licensing I use on Flickr does not have an exact counterpart on Wikipedia. The key difference is that on Flickr it specifies that the photos can not be used for “commercial purposes.” That’s a tough one anyway. Creative Commons just released its findings from a study to determine general understanding of the term “non-commercial.” So, it is rather pointless to worry about the difference in licensing offered by the two entities. It is, however, extremely important to point out the similarities in the licensing. Both licenses explicitly say that “attribution” is a precursor to using the photo in any way, shape, or form. I even went as far as to add the line “Please credit Ryan Jerz when using the photo” to the photo’s page on Wikipedia.

The license has applied since the day it was uploaded. The problem I’m running into is that I while I have seen the image in several places over the past couple of years, I have only given permission to use it one time and in every other case, I have not seen any mention of who took the picture. The only instance where permission was granted for the photo was when I was asked by Silver and Blue Outfitters (full disclosure: I shoot their products for their online store) if they could use this and a photo I shot while at a football game on a poster advertising football season. The two photos are on the poster hanging at the front of their store in Meadowood Mall.

Some examples of the photo’s use include:

• Facebook group UNR vs. UNLV Tailgate and their corresponding Twitter account
• Blog post from Blogging Vegas (where the above group seems to have gotten their image)
• Blog post on Rock M Nation, a Missouri fan site—Update – Rock M Nation has added the photo credit. Thanks for that. We’ll get you Friday.
• Weird story: I was on the front page of the Nevada Appeal a while back (a photo of me touring the Stewart Indian School) and only saw it because my mom let me know I was on there. Above the photo I was in was a series of a few shots promoting upcoming local events. One of them happened to be the Nevada-UNLV football game and what photo do they use to promote that? Why, the cannon, of course. No link unless I can find the paper to scan.
• Update – Another Missouri fan site, Barking Carnival, has come upon the photo

Those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. There have been others.

I’m writing all of this to ask how you would handle these situations if it was your photo that was being used. Heck, maybe yours has been used¹. What would you or did you do about it? Ultimately, the only thing I’ve actually done about any of this is send out a tweet:

It should go to show that I don’t take a huge offense to the use of the photo. I actually am pretty proud that it is used in a good way. It does irk me just a bit that this photo has been used without my name being attached. I could argue that it was even used in a commercial manner (front page of a newspaper, above the fold) without asking permission or attribution. But I also believe in sharing and appreciate that my work is recognized by others as useful.

So, tell me—what would you do in a similar circumstance? What have you done? What should I do in the future?

¹ I was once forced to take down a video I made as a joke because I used a friend’s photos. He didn’t take kindly to it and even contacted one of the sites that hosted the video reporting me as a copyright violator. I had no idea he took it so seriously and thought he’d get that I was just having fun. He either didn’t or didn’t care. I should note that I did actually credit him at the end of the video—just not to his standards.

Best of: Somewhat sappy dad post

No “Best of” list of mine is complete without this one. As a baseball player growing up who saw all the ugliness of dads and a huge baseball fan today, I have always been pretty aware of how I acted toward my son regarding his baseball playing. I never tried to push him, and I stayed away from coaching for that reason. But seeing your kid achieve the pinnacle of the individual successes that collectively make up a baseball player is awesome.

You can’t argue that the home run is the best thing one player can do individually as a hitter. The strikeout is the equivalent on the pitching side, but they are much more common at this age. In fact, I think the failure rate is greater among kids as hitters, so the home run is a much tougher success to achieve. And to hit a home run in a game that’s meaningful (relatively to kids) is even tougher.

All of that put together makes this perhaps the most important, and best, post I’ve ever written here.

Somewhat sappy dad post

I love the way arms look when throwing a baseball. Christy’s arm always looks like this.Over the past week our family endured what might be the first of many of these types of things. It was all-star baseball. And it’s not too easy on you.

The Boy, as of last night, has completed his Little League career. He’ll move up to Babe Ruth next year, where they play on the big field. He has spent his career in Little League as a pretty good player. He was very good a few years, decent others. As we entered this year, he wanted badly to make an all-star team. It wasn’t going to be an easy task for him, as he was pretty much overlooked and unknown throughout Little League. I blame myself, really. We knew all the right people, but I didn’t put in the time coaching or talking him up; I always figured he’d get noticed when he was both good enough and it was time.

It all came together for him this season. His coach really liked his ability and listened to me when I told him The Boy needed to work on his fielding. He had spent a lot of time playing first base (completely by choice), and I always disliked that. First base is where they put the guy who can hit but they want to hide in the field. At this level, it’s the kiss of death. You have to know how to catch ground balls well to keep playing, so I asked that he be moved. Coach Willie listened and put him at third for just about the entire season, except for a few instances when he needed someone who could play first.

The Boy then had to learn to move in the infield, as opposed to just doing the same thing every play. It worked out as he became a better fielder and will continue to improve as he plays on.

His hitting also improved. He was much more confident and hit for the highest average on his team. Prior to this year, many of his hits were without much juice on them and died in front of outfielders. His hits this year were strong enough to reach the gaps and go for extra bases. He hit two automatic doubles (where the ball bounces over the fence) and many more that simply found the gaps. It was a huge improvement.

At the end of the year, Coach Willie told us that he would be coaching the Hooligans—the sort of “B” team for the league’s all-stars. He said The Boy would have a spot if he didn’t make the main team, which was a great fallback to have. He didn’t make the main team, but was more than happy to play Hooligans.

We found out for sure last Sunday, and practice started Monday at 5. It went until after 8 each night until the first game on Thursday. At 8pm. In Gardnerville. South Gardnerville. Luckily, we had Friday off and my mom said we could stay with her on Saturday night in Carson. With a game each night of the weekend and one on Monday, we took the chance to not drive the one night. His team won their first two games by looking decent. The Boy had three hits the first night and drove a couple in while scoring twice. That was nice. The second game he struggled at the plate but was called on to pitch the final 2/3 inning and flamed two guys. The third game was a little less favorable, as Reno Continental got trounced by a Carson team that did not have all-stars. They put their best guys in Hooligans and it showed. The Boy pitched a couple innings, didn’t walk more than one or two guys, but got raked. As did every pitcher they ran out there.

The Boy took part in the Hooligans tournament over the past week. In the tournament, he hit his first ever home run.The Monday game was a big one. Winning would mean a better seed with the tougher teams playing in the other bracket. After driving home Sunday night and listening to The Boy bitch about batting either sixth or eighth, he was slotted at number three in the order. To this point, he had racked up five hits in three games, which could have been leading the team. On the third pitch of his first at-bat he caught up to a high fastball and sent it deep to center. The day before, I had screamed “get outta here!” when he hit a shot to left, only to watch it hit the base of the fence. I looked at this one and thought it looked the same so I shut my mouth. Instead, I watched the center fielder almost lacerate his spleen running into the fence so hard as it sailed over his head and gone. The whole Reno Continental side exploded as they took a 2-0 lead over Sparks Centennial. The Boy had a huge grin on his face as he rounded third and almost looked embarrassed. It was the first home run he had ever hit. People looked at me like I had something to do with it and I said, “The pitch was too high. He should have laid off.”

A couple parents came up and told me that it was a legit shot that cleared a row of trees just behind the fence. Pete Ernaut, who happens to be one of the nicest people I have ever met, and I’m not kidding (we’ve had kids on the same team a few seasons) said, “If there was one kid on this team that deserved a home run, it was [The Boy].” We had been sitting through games with Pete and his family all season and he had coached The Boy a few years back. He knew him as well as anybody involved with the league.

The game wound up going extra innings and Reno Continental won 8-7, making them the second seed in their division. That meant we’d be back the next night at, you guessed it, 8pm for a single elimination playoff game. It didn’t go well, so we’re back to normal now.

Throughout the tournament, I noticed some things about my kid and some of the others. They had grown up a lot. It was really weird. Maybe it was because they were being recognized as good players. Maybe they felt like they were out of their comfort zone. Who knows? But they seemed like much tougher baseball players. Pitchers weren’t affected by the sometimes brutal calls behind the plate. Neither were batters. They played the game with the right kind of emotion—the elation of a good job done. They didn’t throw fits when things didn’t go their way. Heck, they didn’t even seem to notice when things didn’t go their way. It was a wonderful thing to watch. And I remarked on this to several parents who agreed.

We got to spend five nights away from home, but with some other families who I really grew to like in that short time frame. What a cool bunch of people that had kids on that team, and what an awesome bunch of kids.

Here’s to the 2008 Reno Continental Hooligans, who finished with a 3-2 record. And here’s to The Boy, who will never forget that home run (because we’ll frame it).

This was part of the Best of mrjerz.org series that I am posting over the next few weeks. The original post is here.