C. C.
Yelp
Surprisingly, there aren't many places in Chicago where you can buy coffee beans. You can go to a local market and find a minimal selection or to a coffee shop to get their house brand, but you'd think, as popular as coffee is, there would be a store dedicated to selling a variety of coffees from around the world. There just isn't any such thing.
So in my search to find a place to buy good coffee, I ran across a Reddit discussion that recommended Dayglow on Kimball. I looked it up online and found some photos and it honestly didn't look like much, just a big open café with about five tiny shelves on the wall with about a dozen different bags of coffee on them. But a dozen is better than nothing, so I decided I would check it out.
Dayglow is in the middle of the Humboldt Park neighborhood, right next to the 606 bike trail which might explain how such a hipster place could even survive in that location. It's not a short walk from my house but it's not incredibly far either. It was a nice, sunny day and I decided to hoof it over there.
So I get there and it's exactly like the photos, just a big open café and in a little area next to the checkout counter are five small shelves on the wall with some bags of coffee. I'm wearing a $400 Helly Hansen coat mind you. I say this just in case you think the way I get treated is because I look like some bum who isn't serious about buying coffee.
I'm standing there for quite some time, reading the labels of the bags of coffee, while the guy behind the counter, who is maybe four feet from me, is completely ignoring me.
Finally I clear my throat and say: "How much are these bags of coffee?"
"Oh, all different prices," he says. "Which one are you interested in?"
Well, I don't know which one I'm interested in, because they have no prices on them, so I say: "All of them really."
"They range from $20 to $40," he shrugs indifferently.
"So you don't have a list of prices?" I ask.
"No," he says, "you'll just have to sort of ask me about them."
Well that's dumb, I think, but okay, I'll go with the flow. "I guess I'll just pick some bags out then," I tell him and he is not interested in me at all.
I spend twenty more minutes looking at the bags and he's right there, four feet from me, ignoring me. You would think, since he has nothing else to do, he might inquire about my tastes in coffee, perhaps help me pick out which ones are best suited for me. But no. I'm nothing to him.
Finally I pick the three bags that look most interesting to me and I set them on the counter. He scans them. "This one is $33," he says. "And this one is $30. And this one is $25," he remarks as if surprised I found something under $30.
Well, that's a lot of money for coffee, but I walked all the way down there and I don't want to waste the guy's time, so I take out my wallet, pull out a $100 bill and attempt to hand it to him. You can probably guess where this is going by now.
"I don't accept cash," he tells me.
"You're kidding, right?" I say.
"I can't accept cash," he says quite nastily.
Okay, so here we go. There is only one reason a place like that in a neighborhood like that refuses to accept cash, and that is to discriminate against people. Two blocks from this guy's establishment there is literally a homeless tent camp in the park. If any of those people happen to beg enough money to afford one of his cups of coffee, they can't have it, because he won't accept their cash. He only wants a certain clientele, with a certain melanin type who pays for things with phone apps and credit cards. I wonder if anyone who actually lives in Humboldt Park would pay for a cup of coffee with a credit card. You know who does? People from other neighborhoods, people who ride their bikes safely through my neighborhood on the elevated, isolated 606 bike trail without ever bothering to meet the people or discover the culture.
If you added up my three bags of coffee it would have been $88; include the tax and that's nearly $100. I would have gladly given him a tip to round it off if he legitimately didn't have the change: but nope. He won't take my money under any circumstances. I'm not good enough for him. I'm not his type of customer. Don't have the proper lack of melanin or the proper phone app. He probably took one look at me and thought, this guy can't even climb the stairs to the 606 let alone ride a bike.
Before I even make the five steps toward the exit door, he is already putting the bags of coffee back on the shelves. No apology for wasting my time. Nothing. Now he can go back to his life, the way it was before the old guy with his filthy Humboldt Park cash showed up.
This is how gentrification begins folks. With the Dayglows of the world moving in. This is how it begins.