Coffee Shop

THE COFFEE shop sits on the northeast corner of Druid Hill Avenue and Dolphin Street, smack dab in the middle of the neighborhood where civil rights giants Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Mitchell Jr. once lived. Patrons have a choice of sitting in one of the eight booths or six swivel chairs at the counter. Thursday night, Leroy Davis took care of the cooking chores, aided by two others who fried up the fish and dished out the potatoes and greens. Usually, Davis manages the place, which might be unique among coffee shops in the city.

COLO, Iowa -- It's early morning and Vice President Al Gore, fresh from an overnight stay at the farm of Keith and Susan McKinney, is busily working the breakfast crowd at a nearby coffee shop.Dressed in blue work shirt and jeans, he moves unhurriedly from table to table, shaking hands and enthusing about the buttermilk pancakes and sausages his hostess had served him earlier.The talk between the vice president and the breakfasting Iowans is mostly about family, his and theirs. He makes no effort to rush as he moves through the room to press for their votes in the Iowa presidential caucuses still 10 months off.As Mr. Gore makes his rounds, a bevy of television cameramen hovers over the scene, and a boom mike is held high over his head to pick up the chit-chat.

Carma's Cafe is cool in more ways than one. Located a few steps below ground, the cozy space gets natural light but escapes the worst of the summer heat. The small coffee and sandwich shop also has a cool personality, doing what it does without much fuss. Sandwiches are not overstuffed, baked goods are not ridiculously sweet, and no, fries don't come with that. This all seems to meet the needs of the mostly young crowd chatting about schoolwork and vacations or leafing through a New Yorker during a recent weekday lunch.

THE ONCE-ELEGANT El Molino coffee shop in Buenos Aires, now a bankrupt ruin filled with cobwebs, is an apt symbol for Argentina, a proud country that has gone from enjoying some of the highest standards of living in Latin America to becoming the world's economic basket case. Most analysts blame the decline on rampant government overspending in the 1980s and '90s. But Argentina's graceless plunge into the poorhouse goes far deeper than economics or politics. It may be that the nation's history and cultural stumbling blocks weigh as heavily as the crushing $132 billion public-sector debt that has pushed it to the edge of default.

Pieces of column too short to use:So whaddaya want for 95 cents? . . . The sign at the counter of always-busy Jimmy's Restaurant, 801 S. Broadway, exclaims: "New Dessert Sensation! Strawberry Jell-O!" All due respect to the person who penned that advertisement, but Jell-O isn't exactly new. For the record, gelatin powder was patented in 1845, and by 1925 Jell-O was a $647 million business. The rest is history. Somebody tell the sign-maker at Jimmy's.Great moment of the month . . . I house-sit a friend's farm in Harford County.

Westminster's Main Street is about to get a java jolt. The Pour House Cafe is ready to serve a cuppa joe in a colorful, family-friendly environment. It's wired for the Web, it's a gallery for local artists and the owners are promising to share some of their proceeds with local charities. "It'll make a distinct impact on this community," said Sandy Oxx, head of the Carroll County Arts Council, one of the organizations that is to benefit from donations from the coffee shop, scheduled to celebrate its grand opening today.

Annapolis residents line up at Starbucks and diner Apparently the first things you think of upon waking up after a tropical storm has passed through your community is coffee. The Starbucks at Annapolis' Harbor Center suffered no storm damage and no loss of power, but delayed opening until 10 a.m. Sunday anyway. By the time the first employees arrived at the coffee shop, there was a crowd of irritated customers. They formed a line from the counter, out the door and down the sidewalk, that didn't disappear until almost 11:30.

WHERE IS THE American economy headed? Should we be nervous? Will the stock market crash? Will we lose our jobs and our life savings and our homes? Will we ultimately have to ward off starvation by eating our household pets?Hold it! Let's calm down! There is no reason for that kind of thinking! Sure, the economy has been on a "roller coaster" of late, but let's consider the reassuring words of Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan in his recent speech before the Association of People Before Whom Alan Greenspan Gives Speeches.

A Tarot card might have foretold that Ellwood "Bunky" Bartlett would win $32.6 million in the 2007 lottery. Unfortunately, the spirit world provided no omens that might have helped the 45-year-old practicing Wiccan better manage his good fortune. This week, as much of the East Coast is waiting for the winners of the record $656 million jackpot to step forward, Bartlett of Westminster agreed to talk about the things that have gone wrong - and right - in his life during the past three years.

State and city police raided a coffee shop in the 300 block of N. Eutaw St. yesterday and arrested the owners on welfare fraud charges and three others on drug-related charges.Search-and-seizure warrants executed on the Eutaw Coffee Shop came after a three-month joint undercover investigation by both police agencies and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Tfc. David Hammel of the state police identified the coffee shop owners as Baban Nguyen, 42, "Mammasan" Nguyen, 50, and Dung Phoun Nguyen, 20, all of whom live on the premises.