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Goodbye, Grind
By Adam Goldstein
goldstea@mscd.edu

The end of an era is nearing at Auraria. Next semester, the campus will be bereft of one of its distinguishing features, and it will be all the poorer for the loss.

The Daily Grind, Auraria’s beloved and soon-to-be-extinct independent coffee shop, has been a fulcrum for our struggling sense of home. Its disappearance marks not only the demise of one small mom-and-pop business to corporate interests, but signals an irreplaceable loss of character and depth for Auraria.

As a longtime Grind customer, a former employee and a friend to the shop’s owners and workers, I will mourn the absence of this campus hub as I would the loss of a dear friend. For me, the Daily Grind has been much more than a quiet study spot or a convenient purveyor of caffeine. It’s been the site of major life lessons, a forum for the personal joys, sorrows and triumphs impossible to glean in the classroom.

When I returned to Denver in the spring of 2002 after living abroad for a year and a half, I decided to finish my bachelor’s degree at Metro. Although I had taken classes at Auraria years earlier, the campus offered no old friends to rediscover, no deep roots to unearth and no familiar organizations to join.

Though I still knew certain professors and boasted a working knowledge of Auraria’s geography, I faced an anonymous commuter campus. With mounting tuition rates and no reserves, I was in need of work.

I turned in an application at the Daily Grind, and within weeks I was hired as a deli worker. The new post proved to be a milestone: It was my first steady retail job since high school. What’s more, the campus, which had been faceless and anonymous only a few weeks before, suddenly began to gain depth and character. I met students, professors and faculty as I prepared their food. I learned about campus events, clubs and activism. I played guitar at their short-lived open-stage night.

Soon, Auraria started to feel like home, and the Grind quickly transformed into my headquarters.
As I started working behind the coffee bar, my sense of campus inclusion continued to grow. Baristas play a role similar to bartenders, providing customers’ liquid fix while commiserating with their daily woes. In the familiar confines of the coffee shop, I had my first date and fell in love with my first serious girlfriend. Eight months later, the same relationship ended at the Grind’s espresso bar.

Though I stopped working behind the bar in the spring of 2006, I still made daily visits throughout the fall semester. I’d catch up with friends, soak in the homey setting or decompress over a quality vegetarian meal. After four years, the Daily Grind’s staff and clientele have become a second family, and its ambience has remained a source of comfort and direction. I know countless other regulars who have shared similar personal experiences among the lattes and veggie chili. It’s clear to me that the important progress I’ve made and lessons I’ve learned at the Grind would have been impossible in the slick, manufactured atmosphere of a Starbucks.

The key to true community is individuality. Any real sense of home or hearth depends wholly on the intangible quirks, the unique stamps of personality that can’t be reproduced or imitated. The loss of the Daily Grind will rob our campus of community and only add to its anonymity.
I, for one, will grieve for its absence.