10:00 a.m., Saturday morning. Under a frosted-glass San Francisco sky, I stand in a queue that snakes down the middle of Linden Street in Hayes Valley. We’ve all got bed-head. Rumpled shirts. Slip-on shoes, and sleepy, weekend eyes.

I’m about to wait twenty minutes for my cappuccino. And I’ll do it with pleasure. This is Blue Bottle Coffee.

To call Blue Bottle a hole in the wall is actually more truth than euphemism. It’s a storefront, maybe fifteen feet wide, with a roll up door, a take out window, perfected. The street is the café, and the café is the street. The folks behind the counter are coffee purists, serving drip, espressos, cappuccinos, and lattes without a sweetened, blended drink in sight. The crowd is happy to wait. We come for the art, not the convenience, and we’re all in it together.