Solstice Ethiopian Farmer's Union Coffee fun - the Vitamix handles one pound grinding no problem

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hY8bia49GA&ab_channel=Mick3yAbb9y

So that's a lot of coffee!

But this is big grinder - this is the ONLY "capital" investment I got from my 10 years of part-time environmental activist work. I think it was $600.

Wow - that's a LOT of amps for 120 volt. The Leaf Vacuum Shredder is 12 amps!! haha.

So if I wanted to run this blender at 150 feet I  would need my 10 gauge utility cord.

No problem - grinded down dry with no smoke. No overheating.

I just worked up in variable speed from low to high and switched over to high speed to finish a couple seconds. Used that push tool - to work the beans down.

What's so special about this coffee?

I got it as a gift for farm sitting at the Regenerative Agriculture farm - where they also had a History of the Minnesota Farmer's Union book. I speed read the book. The FIRST state headquarters was in the same hometown that my mom's family grew up in - and my grandfather established a successful sheet metal duct work company that is still operating and growing today as a Worker's Owned business.

https://www.mfu.org/

So turns out they started buying Bulk Cooperative Shopping Coffee at a cheaper price - in the 1920s!!!

I search coffee on their site because this brand is not obvious. It's only sold to members.

https://www.mfu.org/state-fair/ 

Here it is - finally - so they have a State Fair coffee shop.

So they sell an Ethiopian coffee bean from this brewery.

 They may have hints of cherry, grape, lime, and peach. Their natural process gives them an earthy taste. If beans aren't dried correctly, they develop a sour taste and become too brittle to roast. Yirgacheffe beans are often wasted due to poor natural processing.

Says it's organic.

Wow - $15 a pound!

So they get it at a bulk price of course.

So the members get a discount.

OK so this is the SAME coffee that the local anarchist coffee shop sold on the West Bank in Minneapolis. It's very thick oily flavor coffee.

 Typical Music blasting at this Coffee House

I was a "regular" at this coffee house. When I first started going there - I noticed that African immigrants were already regulars there - that was before it was called Hard Times cafe. It started out with two other names. One being the "Urban Peasant" cafe. I liked that one.

Today the late-night crowd at the Hard Times looks much as it always has: African men arguing in their native tongues; green-haired punks slapping the chess timer; students losing themselves in paperbacks. The café is still a hub of West Bank academia, bohemia, and Somalia--complete with loud music and an anarchist service ethic ("Stupid questions: $5.00" reads the chalkboard menu). And the perennial friction between the vegetarian greasy spoon and city hall still comes down to a battle between those who would never set foot in such a place and those who would.

So the African immigrants were from Eritrea or Ethiopia. I befriend one from Eritrea. He had been raised by a monk and I think he had been abused by the monk. I tried healing him in full lotus - but he was hard-wired not to be healed. He was on social disability for depression but he suffered from "addiction" of the original sin kind. He had studied mathematics and biology at the University and so, like me, he would buy used books. We would discuss philosophy of science as I sat in full lotus and I kept taking tea tree oil to purify my "yang qi" as my yin qi went into him. I did this for about a year before giving up. haha.

He had gotten kicked out of the coffee shop since he used to get into violent rages with the other males in the coffee shop. He shared with me how he had a "fling" with the other African immigrant in that coffee shop.

So later on I also got unofficially kicked out of the cafe for my full lotus tantric antics. haha. Also my dumpster-diving crap smell  - the garlic, etc. Full on Tantric Zen crazy energy.

I went back a few years ago - and hung out a bit with another regular and we laughed about old times from 20 years ago. And the Hard Times started the Black Label Bike Club featuring "Joisting." I did not know about this "sport." But a documentary was made about it - featuring the dude on the right in suspenders. That's Jake. He considers himself "owner" of the cafe now - that the collective kind of broke up. I am probably exaggerating. Maybe he doesn't even work there anymore. He was considered the founder of the Bike Club though and he also is part native indigenous. He kicked me out just by saying to me, "I'm just trying to run a business." 

Since Jake and I had chatted over the years about various things - well actually we only had a real conservation ONCE about psychedelics. haha. Anyway I had chatted about him from other people of our mutual friends. So Just gave him a Chimpanzee submission smile since I knew if I said ONE WORD he would have exploded in rage. He drinks a lot. So then I left - and I was proud to have made an impact on this cafe - as the workers pride themselves on that Cool attitude of Chic Denial about everything.

But I ate a LOT of meals there from the 1980s up to the 2000s!! Twenty years of coffee and home-made blueberry muffins and cookies and rice and beans meals - and eggs and kale.

OH so they are selling music? Cool.

http://www.citypages.com/music/good-times-6703174

OH that was from 2001 - from the LAST time I was a regular there. I had a PRECOGNITIVE DREAM about the cop raid of that coffee shop!

 I forgot about that. So the Maoist Cult lived above the coffee shop - probably still does. And the FBI infilitrated the Maoist Cult since the Cult was bragging about how they were storing up guns for the revolution, etc. Actually I just knew that on my own but they also liked to organize and Monopolize the "coalition" protests against War, etc. The Maoist Cult would INFILITRATE all the other progressive groups in the Twin Cities to try to secretly push their Leninist Revolution. So any actual concrete REFORMS were thwarted since they got in the way of the BIG LENINIST revolution that was supposed to happen once the Maoist Cult had gained control of each progressive group. A girlfriend of mine had been contacted to be a secret member of the cult - they took her out to dinner and presented her with the Little Red Book of Mao and asked her to promise a LifeLong Devotion. She told me she turned them down. I outed the cult as having taken over a University group and one of the members of the group - a fellow younger student - thanked me for the expose. ... He got a job as a local news reporter for the public radio and was room mate to my coworker at the Nonprofit.

It's easy to get paranoid when the FBI is infiltrating leftist groups all the time and then the leftists are trying to plan violent "defense" for the revolution. I just told the Marxists - look if the US wanted to NUKE this whole neighborhood they would have no problem doing so. In other words stop pretending in these fantasies of male Missile Envy. haha.

What I liked about this cafe is that the building is a TRIANGLE - so also they hand painted the inside with funky graffiti designs that are psychedelic. So it messes up the otherwise Rectilinear Masonic control Matrix of the city.

Also they tried to stay open as long as possible. So I would normally go there over the holidays and I read many books there. I read Noam Chomsky there in the 1990s - around 1994 to 1996. I read Slavoj Zizek there. 

So then I branched out during my Tantric days - and I was hanging out in the Somali cafes as the ONLY white person now (not the other way around at Hard Times where only a couple AFricans were regulars). I was approached - ARE YOU ITALIAN?!! The Somalis could not believe I was "Minnesotan" - I was told: "Minnesotans are too conservative." - that was a nice way of saying racist. haha.

https://www.facebook.com/hardtimescafe/ 

And the Arab Owners of the Somali Mall tried to kick me out as a White Trash bicycle homeless type - and so I quickly said: I  SPEND $10 DOLLARS A DAY HERE. haha. That changed the lady's mind.

They are famous slum lords of immigrant housing, etc. in Minneapolis. Even the Somali community had to confront them. 

now mpls is giving away parking meter spots so we will have the whole front

Wow so Hard Times set up a "patio" in the STREET. Hilarious.