Note: This is the third post in a semi-regular series where our posts will be curated interviews with people engaged in coffee across Milwaukee. Our goal is to highlight their stories and experiences, and share their love of coffee with you all. These interviews have been edited, but also run by those whose voice we are highlighting.
Coffee throughout history has been tied to art, expression, and deep conversation. As just a few scattered examples, coffee houses were a central gathering spot for Bohemian artists, university students and intellectuals fomenting change in India, as “Schools of the Wise” in the Middle East where they were first born.
For this edition of our interview series, we decided to tap into these roots, along with the rich Milwaukee arts scene. Resident historian and Parks Foundation Director of Strategic Foundations, Adam Carr, made an introduction to Milwaukee native and poet Kavon Cortez Jones (KJ), and we immediately thought that it would be great to get his perspective.
At the Lakefront Colectivo, Gabe sat down with KJ to talk about coffee (of course), Milwaukee, his story, race, and a number of other topics.
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Gabe: Tell me about what you love about coffee shops.
KJ: So, what do I love about coffee shops? So the backstory to me falling in love with coffee shops is probably just movies when I would see a coffee shop setting. Being a kid from the inner city, who had never explored Milwaukee, I just assumed Milwaukee didn't have a setting like that. And I was always so in love with the character, you know, sitting in a coffee shop, writing or having conversations, listening to the conversations in coffee shops. So I was living kind of the truncated version of real life through movies.
One of my favorite movies, I believe it's titled cafe or a coffee shop, is with Jennifer Love Hewitt. And it was this very deep kind of metaverse type of movie. Jennifer Love Hewitt would come in with her bike into a coffee shop. I was like, Oh, this is like so me, is this something that I would do? I mean would come to coffee shops to get away from my mentally and emotionally abusive mom. It was kind of just an oasis, just to be around people. Being 18, 19 years old, I had like no connections, and I was like, it's free to go inside coffee shops and chill. So I would sit and write and just channel all the trauma through writing. And I could sit here and be free, and no one's gonna say anything. Although people have said something. Sometimes I dozed off in coffee shops, though it wasn't on purpose. And I would wake up and someone would tell me, you can't sleep in here.
And then other times I've been kicked out of coffee shops just for not buying anything. I try my best not to see it from a racial perspective, but it's a vulnerability. I'm the most vulnerable being African American man and 18, I'm the most vulnerable person in there. So it's easy for folks to point that out, like, Oh, hey, get out of here. You're not buying anything that happened to me.
Gabe: That sounds really powerful.
KJ: Yeah. It was nostalgic for me to watch Riverdale, with that character named Jughead Jones. My last name is Jones. Jughead Jones goes to Riverdale High. I went to Riverside High. Okay. He sits inside Pops, the chocolate shop like writing. And it's like, oh, this is so me. Because in 2017, in my early 20s, I would be inside Fuel Cafe writing with my laptop. And so I was like, it's so me. He's a writer like me narrating his city.
Gabe: Can you tell me more about your favorite coffee shops?
KJ: I love coffee shops because I see it as like an urban oasis from the noise. I was at Brady Street days last year. Rochambeau was just slammed with people. Slammed with people like leaving in and out. But this year at Brady Street fest, there was like five people in there at the most inside. Outside, it's just like 1000s of people partying on Brady. The streets are blocked and everything. And so I see coffee shops as like an urban oasis. You get away from the noise. And I go to several different coffee shops, just to chill and bike around. And biking came into play when I was 19. I'm 29 and I don't know how to drive. I bike everywhere, and it's just taught me to when I bike, to be careful and look at the city in multiple angles. And it's taught me how to branch outside in my comfort zone.
I always thought Milwaukee only had one or two coffee shops. There's just so many, or there's just so many that I'm very conscious of. And so it teaches me to go to different coffee shops, and they totally have a like, a whole different culture and different walks of life come inside each coffee shop. Every coffee shop I feel like has all the same essentials, but they all have their different spin. Here we are like at Collectivo. It's a chain in Madison, Chicago and Milwaukee. I also go to the Daily Bird, which is where Fuel used to be, and it's like a totally different vibe. It's like a very punk rock type of vibe. I still have yet to get used to the yellow painted walls. And usually, I mean, there's folks in there from around the community. I know a lot of the baristas, and it's just really cool, just to be able to sit in a space outside of home.
And then there's Rochambo, which is where I centered one of my monologues. Rochambeau was the setting of the seven minute monologue, a love letter to Milwaukee, where I thoroughly explained where I'm at, how I found myself in the city. Something I wrote when I was 22. I would come to the Humboldt Colectivo a lot, because it was the closest coffee shop to home when I lived on Richards with my mom. And then I used to go to Fairground. They have inside eternal swing sets, like inside a fairground. I was like, Oh, I never thought about theming a coffee shop after a fair. I was like, wow, okay.
And so really, people do think it out, and it's just really cool to just be in a coffee shop when I feel like a main character, I feel like I'm always like the main character when I go inside the coffee shop, and everyone else is just kind of like an extra. Like, I'm the main character now. You're the main character of your life. I'm the supporting cast in your life, and you're the supporting cast in my life right now. So that's how I see it. To make life much more entertaining.
Gabe: I love that particularly as we're here in this lakefront Colectivo. Like you're saying, this was actually one of the first coffee shops that I came to in Milwaukee, and this building is just so cool, right? So much Milwaukee and its history.
KJ: You know I think about, like, the amount of effort that it has to take to gut a pumping station out and then make it into a coffee shop. That's crazy. They have all the signs and stuff up with what used to be here. I feel like someone had to get a notebook and just write out everything's in place. I think that's really cool. A lot of effort goes into opening a business of anything, but it's impressive. I look at Milwaukee, we are a microcosm within the macrocosm of the United States. It’s like, where did humanity find all the time to build all these buildings? You ever think about that?
Gabe: Yeah, so I grew up in New York City. I mentioned, and I had that same thought, not only with the building of the buildings, but just how it functions on the day in, day out. All these people doing all these things, going everywhere, and yet somehow we end up with most people have electricity, most people have food
KJ: We are so smart. Humans are so smart. I'm like, wow. But at the same time, the dichotomy of that. As smart as we are, we are ignorant, dumb and stupid. But focus on the smart part, you know, and not all the other parts, because I feel like we have both the good and bad everywhere.
Gabe: You were talking about writing in coffee shops. Can you tell me more about that? Do you find coffee shops a great place to write?
KJ: It was so uncomfortable living at home when my mom when I was 19. I think that was a blessing because I would naturally wake up at 5 am or 5:30 feel well rested, and I would go to a coffee shop and chill. I'm happy that the space I lived in was uncomfortable because it taught me to get outside of my head. The space I live in now I'm very comfortable. Like my room is clean, it's set up the way I want it to be and I just want to stay home, which is a good thing. At the same time it could be a bad thing, because sometimes I sit inside the house and I don't go out, meet and talk with people. So finding a balance. Like, I know I have everything I need here. Why do I need to go out to a coffee shop? One of the reasons why I go out to a coffee shop is to be around energy and people and to buy coffee. I spent so much money on coffee in my early 20s because it's like this cool, hip American thing to do. I was like, I'm gonna do this too. You know, you see all these folks talking about I bought my coffee. I want to do that too, manipulated by social media.
Gabe: It's such a true thing about, like, our American coffee drinking culture, like when I lived in South American--Colombia--part of their culture is you go out on the streets. People take coffee breaks, right? You go on the streets. It is literally, like 25, 50 cents, and you buy from a street vendor a little cup of coffee. It's usually social and they're not spending $8 on some elaborate coffee drink. To be fair, it was usually not very good, but it’s a totally different culture.
KJ: I feel like it should be free coffee in Colombia. Not free, but there's a lot--after drinking coffee, the first thing I think of when I think of Colombia I think of Shakira, right? Shakira, half Palestinian, right, half Colombian.
Gabe: I totally get it. So what would be like your ideal coffee shop? Like, if you could create one, let's say you could open one, what would it be like?
KJ: That is, like the most, the most perfect question to ask. So it's gonna sound very contrived when I start this, but eight years ago, I wrote a poetry book entitled Club Noir. The theme behind the book Club Noir is a hypothetical cafe--nightclub/cafe--on MLK drive where black and brown folks come to be themselves minus like the white oppressors. You know, and politicians. And one of the things was white people, if they wanted to come in, they had to name three unarmed black men slain by cops. That was kind of like the idea behind that. I would love to open like a coffee shop entitled Club Noir on MLK drive, and just invite the community of black and brown folks just to chill and do art. This the way I describe it in like the intro of the book that I self published when I was 22.
Another mentor, Benny Higgins, he did this amazing painting of me entering Fuel. It’s a painting of me in a black fedora and black pea coat and pants, dress shoes, and I'm entering Fuel Cafe, which is titled Club Noir to meet the love of my life, a black woman in a yellow dress with an afro. And I am surrounded by purple rain, a dedication to Prince because I self published right after Prince's birthday. The purple rain kind of represents the ongoing pain of living with my mom and being stressed out. Then there's like, crows, a few crows, and there's one crow that just looks up at me. And so Club Noir would be a great coffee shop. That's my ideal coffee shop.
Gabe: You know, it's interesting to hear you talk about Milwaukee a little bit because I see both a love and a positive and then the challenge and racism too. How would you describe what you think about Milwaukee?
KJ: I think in a lot of my poetry people have a deeper perspective sometimes than from the angle that I wrote my poetry. People tell me that. KJ, you acknowledge the bad, but you focus on the good. And so in light of my poetry, I start with the positive and the racism, the red lining is sort of in between. My reason behind doing is like you gotta have the positivity at first. Because you start off with the negative and talking about racism and red-lining and you're gonna turn white people off. White people are not gonna want to listen So you gotta talk about all the glamorous things and the coffee shops and the drinking and stuff in order to appeal to white ears. And then when you get in the middle, you get down to it. You mention the tribes and the racism. Latinos made the South Side home after white flight. Like, white folks don't want to hear that at the beginning of a poem, so I put that in between. You have to have both. You have to have a balance.
I can't be biking around like as an African American oblivious to the racism and everything I see. I see how everything is set up. But I try my best to find a neutral ground. I am a good person. And being an African American man. It teaches me to be an even greater person, above and beyond. Because at the moment, I feel like I do something wrong, like these white folks are going to come after me, you know what I mean, and so I always have to stay to myself, live in that neutral space, but at the same time, still build relationships and everything.
I can only speak from the black perspective. It's like, sometimes, as a white person or a white passing person, I feel like you instantly have their respect or they're gonna fight you for your respect probably more so than their black counterparts because we know the ability of what white people could do to us. You know what I mean on a good and bad level?
But we should treat each other the same, black people for a long time. We're told that we are less smart than other people. We're inferior. Because we have this background of slavery, we were made to feel and be like animals. And that narrative from a subliminal level, a meta level, still permeates into today. Even sometimes, I have to fight the notion myself thinking that black people are not as smart as white people. In my opinion, I feel like, in a lot of ways, white people invaded Egypt. They took us from Africa because they knew that we were smarter than them. Just take, take from Africa. Take the books, take the knowledge, and everything. But now that narrative of a feeling inferior to white folks is just so perpetuated, and it's up to us as black people just to fight constantly.
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Check out more about KJ’s work, love of coffee and Milwaukee, and particularly his “A Love Letter to Milwaukee” on Soundcloud
I love you Milwaukee
I love your coffee shops and art galleries
Fuel Cafe
where I experienced my coming of age among hipsters and punks
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