A familiar sight in Portland on a Saturday afternoon. Students, friends, families, empty nesters, foreigners, the among the things that many of them have in common are the need for a good cup of coffee, companionship, ambiance, and maybe even a little peace and quiet. As winter gives way to spring, they will grab their cups and populate the cafe patios and occupy the parks to soak in the short season of natural vitamin D, otherwise known as sunshine, here in our fine city.
Coffee drinking is called by some a cheap luxury. Even with the increasing threat of higher coffee bean prices being passed on to coffee house patrons, it is still a relatively cheap way to pass the time. If you are truly concerned about rising coffee prices, you can effectively hedge against the rising cost of your caffeine addiction by placing a portion of your portfolio in an Exchange Traded Fund like the iPath Dow Jones-UBS Coffee ETN, whose stick ticker symbol JO must have been cleverly devised by some brilliant marketing mind.

A familiar sight in Portland on a Saturday afternoon. Students, friends, families, empty nesters, foreigners, the among the things that many of them have in common are the need for a good cup of coffee, companionship, ambiance, and maybe even a little peace and quiet. As winter gives way to spring, they will grab their cups and populate the cafe patios and occupy the parks to soak in the short season of natural vitamin D, otherwise known as sunshine, here in our fine city.
Coffee drinking is called by some a cheap luxury. Even with the increasing threat of higher coffee bean prices being passed on to coffee house patrons, it is still a relatively cheap way to pass the time. If you are truly concerned about rising coffee prices, you can effectively hedge against the rising cost of your caffeine addiction by placing a portion of your portfolio in an Exchange Traded Fund like the iPath Dow Jones-UBS Coffee ETN, whose stick ticker symbol JO must have been cleverly devised by some brilliant marketing mind.
For years, it had been accepted that Starbucks’ wild success had cemented Seattle’s place as the coffee capital of the world. If the average coffee drinker were to partake of his or her 3.1 cups per day in Seattle, they were considered privileged.
As Starbucks, which now pours 1 out of every 100 cups of coffee served on the planet each day, struggles to find a place to expand in the northwest that is not within five blocks of one of their existing locations, coffee connoisseurs are quietly speaking of Portland as the new Mecca of coffee culture. As Starbucks continues to go global, local Portland roasters like Stumptown continue to develop what just may be the best coffee in the world.
So wrap your hands around a cup of locally brewed coffee and know that not only will you make it through another seemingly endless winter, you are one of the privileged 500,000 to live in what will soon be recognized as the coffee capital of the world. After athletic shoes and coffee, could the movie and tech industries be next to defect to Portlandia?
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