Thunderbird Coffee
Thank you to the original Thunderbird Coffee location, which has closed to make way for a beautiful space to house its sibling Bird Bird Biscuit. Thunderbird will come back at that location as a trailer.
I made and met friends here. At times I have both driven and walked from miles away, and that’s not even a dig at the limited parking. I have stopped by on numerous Christmases for the free coffee they offered, just because it’s something Thunderbird would do.
Thunderbird at Koenig & Woodrow is where I spilled a large mocha right on the keyboard of my work laptop—I can still see the barista’s face of abject horror, and just the useless mopping with a dishrag that was like a pile of laundry someone threw into a swimming pool. This is the event which spurred me to take a sacred oath of always getting my coffee to-go and with a secure lid.
Back before a full food menu, before thirty-some beers and ciders on tap, before the sleek and angular seating, there was a Thunderbird with coffee, key lime pie, and known strategic outlet locations for the long haul. It was the coffeeshop to talk shop, the impromptu co-working location, and encapsulated the welcoming Austin coffeeshop experience I so fervently explained to my out-of-town friends.
The New Yorker has a delightfully specific piece entitled How a Cheese Goes Extinct, which goes into depth about the life, the denouement, and the attempted revival of cheese in the UK:
For some cheesemakers, like Schneider, the quest to save a cheese will bear down on the minutiae of environmental terroir: the land, the biodiversity of the grazing pastures, and the microbial communities present in the raw milk.
[…]
But the human factors also extend further afield, to the hands that will package the cheese, the money that will purchase it, the shelves it will fill, and the mouths it will feed.
For me, Thunderbird was never about the coffee, the origins and history of the espresso beans, or the model of the Marzocco espresso machines. It was about the people, the grins and the handshakes (remember those?). It was spotting a familiar face, trying to recall the last interaction you had with them before approaching the bench and interrupting their day. It was silently but intensely judging every patron, creating a backstory, judging those backstories, and guessing who was streaming Netflix (or FaceTiming) and kneecapping the shared wifi. Wifi doesn’t grow on trees, people!
In all likeliness, the prolonged social distancing and subsequent shuttering of small businesses may only intensify the need to wax nostalgic. Not having had espresso for four months after a good decade of constant espresso may also intensify this need. Nonetheless, nostalgia serves as a good reminder for when we can safely emerge from our social caverns: we should treasure the spaces we share, the company of others, and certainly not take these things for granted.
Thanks Thunderbird, and see you around.