Dreamwave Coffee

Mike runs Dreamwave himself, calls Lex his manager and Allie his lead, and keeps his mother's homemade banana bread on the board, which is about as literal as a family business gets. The shop's own copy promises weirdness out of a Kurt Vonnegut novel and then, a line later, insists the silliness says nothing about how seriously the coffee is taken: the second half is the sentence doing the work.

The shop roasts its own and sells five twelve-ounce bags at $22.99: an Ethiopia Yirgacheffe posted for wild blueberry, passion fruit and hibiscus, a Guatemala for campfire chocolate and orange peel, a Brazil decaf, and two blends in Three Amigos and Mr. Sunny, with no page naming a farm, a varietal, a process or a roast date. At the bar the classics sit beside eleven specialty drinks built on housemade syrups, and not one of them names an origin.

The 90s reading is deliberate: pink tables edged in scallops, art hung among the merchandise on the walls, flowers and customized cups out on display, and a small, notably clean room with seats indoors and out. The graphic work is too consistent to have come off a shelf, a hand-drawn wordmark and bold poster art that carry onto the retail bags as pop-art mascots in primary colors and comic dots.