Very tight race.

It was an extremely tight race over the past 2 months, ups and downs, thicks and thins, straight stretches, and wild curves.

The Mustache-off between Jeremy R Jansen, Nicholas Brown, and myself, Samuel James, has come to its conclusion, 2 months in the waiting, and I am proud to hold the title as Mustache champion.
It's going to be a lot of shoe to fill, but I intend to keep this little furry trinket right where it belongs.

A show of hope for all man, a sign of the future for all children, and a statement for all to see.
I am Mustache, hear me roar.

Growing up, I wanted a batmobile, a leather jacket, and a mustache.
Those where dreams I could never have until this great day.

I thank you all for voting me your peoples champion, but I also thank my fellow competitors for their devotion to what never was a real "competition", rather a brotherly appreciation for a long lost mark of men.

Let your upper lip grow men, let it be free as the wild grass in the fields to the west, free as the migrating fowl, to set up shop wherever it is fit.

Let there be mustaches.

Manic Mother Fuckin' Mania!!

Maybe not the most appropriate post title when trying to big up the newly opened, and staffed up with true hippie speedballers, Manic Coffee, at 426 College @ Bathurst.

But it is MF'n mania o'er there, so I'm allowed to.

It has been 2 weeks already since we opened, and I have worked the shop every single day, yet somehow it doesn't even feel like its been 2 weeks.

I'm really feelin' it at the shop, it's getting better every day.
New equipment arrives, new products, new coffees!
We learn something, or have to re-evaluate and go back to square one all the time, and the same awesome customers keep coming back.

I think people in that area were really waiting for something like this, something that would not only fill the void, but overflow it with excellence.

New staff members slowly squirming in, getting some intense, but empowering training.
It's been great to see a person acquire a taste for espresso within a couple of days, to see those epiphanies happen, where the eyes widen, the light goes on, and they know something they had been struggling to figure out.

I feel like it has also made me go back to basics with how I make espresso, and relearn some things I had only known in theoretical knowledge, but was unable to fully use in practice with the equipment, and environment I was in before.

I have also been really stoked to work with my good buddy Nick.
Shout outs buddy!!
It's been really awesome to have talked a lot about coffee with Nick in the year previous to us and Matt opening this shop up, and then now working together, it feels pretty good with the two of us on bar, I feel like lots of great drinks go out, that makes me happy.

Anyways, most people reading have already been by for a coffee, if not, please do, you wont have a better cup anywhere in Toronto.

And you won't see better mustaches, or hear more Queen anywhere else.

Bye.

Surprise!

Surprise!
I found out over lunch today that I will be venturing Chicagowards this time tomorrrow evening.
What a wild couple o' weeks I have ahead of me.

I hope to accomplish on this trip:
-Intensive training
-Big Sur and the Oranges of Heironymus Bosch
-Cupping some ill direct trade single origin coffees
-Haceinda Esmerelda
-Meet Jeff Watts?
-Fat ass Chi-town pizzas
-couple millimeters growth on the stache?

Then I come home, beat my brains with training for the Nationals, and work away at opening Torontos finest coffee shop with my good buds Matthew Lee, and Nicholas Brown.
So stoked.

Get ready Toronto!!!! Manic Coffee is gonna show this city how real coffee tastes.

MIAstache

No, Nick Brown didn't back out, he's just MIA.

shakebloardung

It was the best of music, it was the blurst of music.

spotted

A personal sighting on youtube.

2:14 into the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBUcPpJn4jI

I skate, who cares.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=8032571127102547954


Picture and video courtesy of McCellphone.