Seattle is synonymous with coffee. Mostly, because of Starbucks whose tagline could be: Starbucks, It Tastes Like Coffee. Sumatra Blend, tastes like coffee. Pike Place, tastes like coffee. Blonde Roast, tastes like coffee. Breakfast sandwich, tastes like frozen, goes pretty good with coffee.

I lived in Seattle for the past seven years and, I guess, I expected more. Some kind of holy coffee experience. I mean, it’s not bad. I don’t generally go in for complicated coffee drinks, though. I like it simple, hot, brown, in a cup. Coffee doesn’t usually need a menu, but if it does, then keep it simple. A Frappaccino, however, isn’t creative, it’s diabetes.

Keep it simple, don’t add too much, just let the coffee do its thing. Don’t get me wrong, I love cappuccino, espresso, the classic drinks. As soon as you start adding caramel, though, you’ve lost me. And lattes? If I want a glass of milk, I’ll have a glass of milk. Seattle’s coffee culture is mostly waiting in line. Everybody wants some variation of a half-caff, soy or almond milk, matcha, chai, double pump disaster. By the time I’d finally get my turn in front of the barista I’d be worried after hearing the words coming out of the customers in front of me that I even spoke the same language as these people. Quick, what’s sign language for coffee. “Coffee”, I’d say stacking one closed fist on top of the other while I made a grinding motion, sometimes I’d ask for espresso and hop in place. Whatever it was, it had a one-word delivery and there was good luck each time, they understood me and seemed to appreciate the simplicity of my order. I’d once had an adjective weary barista look at me with absolute relief and mouth the words, ‘thank you.’

The only time I’ve ordered a coffee drink with more than a single word descriptor was here, in Milwaukee.

It was two words, Kevorkian Krush, well three, in the Midwest we say please. Now, this thing’s been around for almost three decades and may not seem exciting. To those who know, you may say, “yeah, at Fuel Café, it’s got lots of caffeine.” It does have lots of caffeine. I’m still vibrating from the ones I drank in the nineties. Besides that, though, is that this is a distinctly Milwaukee thing. There are many variations on this drink around the country, even close to home. I’d once had something similar at a café in Madison that was called a Keith Richards and served with an unfiltered cigarette. But this version is punk in a blue collar way that only Milwaukee can pull off.

In ’93, Scott Johnson and Leslie Montemurro hit on something. They opened Fuel in Riverwest and started providing “Killer Coffee, Lousy Service.” There was a growing coffee shop culture here, just like everywhere else in the country. Fuel was a place that was just a place, but better than any other place. It was punk in the sense that it did what it did better and different than anyone else and didn’t seem to care what others thought. Fuel is Fuel. Their standards are high, they work their asses off, all are welcome. “Killer Coffee, Lousy Service,” not quite true when you consider this was exactly what Milwaukee needed at exactly the right time.

The coffee was killer, still is, but the service that was provided, and still provides, is a perfect combination of punk culture and community action. In the early nineties, Riverwest was a neighborhood on the fringe. Relatively cheap to live in, but not a place the suburban kids moving into the city to go to university felt safe and comfortable. Fuel was a safe place, get a Kevorkian and a pack of American Spirits (now a Kevorkian and CBD products). You could do homework, draw, paint, create in some way, sell your zine, or just sit and drink coffee. It was and still is a place to gather, to realize that as segregated as this city can be, it’s important to challenge our ideas of division and go somewhere you wouldn’t, to get out of the confines of campus or your regular neighborhood, make this city closer.

Drawing comparisons to opening a coffee shop in a transitional neighborhood and a movement to be less segregated may be a stretch, but it doesn’t lessen the impact of the not lousy service that Fuel Café has given the city. In ’93 it became a place that artists, musicians, students, and just people from this neighborhood and others could come to without judgement.  I was a preppy kid who wore sweater vests and button-down shirts, but I got to hang out with a group of Eastside punks. We went to loud shows in basements, drank cheap beer in returnable bottles, and got coffee at Fuel. What you wore or what you looked like mattered less than who you were and how you respected those around you. It’s still that place. The menu’s changed, there’s more of some things and less of others. They’ve evolved as needed, but the core feel of Fuel persists.

And the coffee is still Killer.

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