Subculture

Coffee in the morning seems to work like magic. I chose coffee drinkers as my subculture because almost everybody drinks coffee every morning. It's such a popular behavior that we practice each day. For most people, drinking coffee is the only thing that keeps them going. Without it, life would be so dysfunctional. I personally am a regular coffee drinker. I get really bad migraine if I don't get it in the morning - apparently, a lot of people do too. I started observing my coworkers, then moved on to grocery shoppers, then to actual Starbucks customers. After going to the same location everyday for the past few days, I realized that most of their customers are the same ones who come to get their coffee. A lot of their employees already know their customer's names and their drinks that as they step up to the counter, the cashier says "Hello ______, are you getting the "usual"?. Very impressive if we think about it. Hundreds, if not thousands of people, come to the coffee shop to get their caffeine fix. The history of coffee goes at least as far back as the thirteenth century. The story of Kaldi, the 9th-century Ethiopian goat herder who discovered coffee, did not appear in writing until 1671 AD and is probably apocryphal. From Ethiopia, coffee was said to have spread to Egypt and Yemen. The earliest credible evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the middle of the fifteenth century, in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen. By the 16th century, it had reached the rest of the Middle East, Persia, Turkey, and northern Africa. Coffee then spread to Italy, and to the rest of Europe, to Indonesia, and to the Americas. Nowadays, people from all over the world drink coffee and shops like Starbucks and Peets coffee are seen almost every corner. “Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.” Just like a lot of remedies, there are good and bad effects of drinking coffee. First of all, it is highly addictive. That’s one of the reasons behind people coming every single day, sometimes, even getting double or triple shots. If they don’t get our coffee, it’s almost like they turn into different kind of people. Their behaviors change, they become grumpy, nothing seems to work unless they get their cup of coffee. Studies show that people who drink coffee are less likely to have type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and dementia have fewer cases of certain cancers, heart rhythm problems, and strokes. Regular coffee, of course, also contains caffeine. Caffeine can raise blood pressure, as well as blood levels of the fight-or-flight chemical epinephrine. It also increases heartburn for some people. As I do my observation, I try to analyze why they keep coming back to the same place, drinking the same coffee, spending money on their coffee when they can just buy a whole pack and make it themselves at home. Is it because the coffee is just amazing, is it because they don’t have time, is it because the employees are just nice and friendly, or could it be because it’s almost like a lifestyle? A subculture is defined as a group of people with a culture, which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong. If we take a look around, there are so many groups of people who may be practicing behaviors that we find very interesting. California is a very diverse state and for most of us who live here, we are somewhat used to the idea of different kinds of cultures around us. Coffee drinkers is just one of them. This subculture is observed all over the world. Coffee shops have transitioned to a place where people go to not just for coffee but also where they take advantage of free Internet, eat breakfast, study, hang out and catch up with friends, and even meet new friends. Drinking coffee is something that a lot of people share and that’s what makes this subculture stay around all these years, generation to generation.