The Need To Be Precise

New York City is a fas­ci­nat­ing place in the way that it’s hyper-congested. How so? Walk­ing on the street, with all kinds of things pass­ing by, you actu­ally enter another world by pass­ing another block. Hence, every­thing is within your reach — as long as you know where to find it.

Bongs, bongs, bongs… and mini scale

Today, I am strolling on St. Mark’s Place look­ing for this “thing” to ele­vate my cof­fee pro­fes­sion. St. Mark’s Place is a busy street lined up with Japan­ese beer houses, restau­rants, sou­venir shops and tat­too shops, but not a cof­fee shop. (Puerto Rico Import­ing is beyond 2nd Ave which I don’t pass often, so that doesn’t count:) I come here for yak­i­tori and Japan­ese beer all the time. But today, I passed by all the restau­rants and headed to the tat­too shops… Yeah, if you want to name peo­ple Japan­ese, Goth or Punk by where they go, today I am a punk. But label­ing me won’t deter my deter­mi­na­tion to hunt down the “thing”: a mini scale.

I have seen a lot of baris­tas use a mini scale to weigh cof­fee grounds for brew­ing. No doubt, that’s a promis­ing scene no mat­ter how the cup ends like later. I was all expe­ri­en­tial­ist — I don’t really bother how much the weight is in my brew as long as it pleases me as usual. Now, peo­ple start ask­ing me: how much cof­fee ground to the water is the RIGHT pro­por­tion? With the rep­u­ta­tion as a “cof­fee snob”, appar­ently, “two cof­fee scoops” is not con­vinc­ing to peo­ple at all. Hence, to live up to my rep­u­ta­tion, I gotta gain some doc­tri­nar­ian bent by start­ing to weigh my cof­fee grounds. “36.1 gram,” on the mini scale read­ing, “to 360ml water.” How con­clu­sive is that!

0.1 gram read­ing mini scale

I was here because of a tip from a barista today. “All the stores on St. Mark’s Place have it.” “Yeah,” I said to myself, “why didn’t I make the con­nec­tion between the need of pre­cise mea­sure­ments and water smok­ing pipes; bongs?” Oh, and “tat­toos and glass sou­venirs” too. All found on St. Mark’s Place! Of course, I will find mini scales read­ing under 500 grams in 0.1 gram inter­vals here.

The first shop I stopped by sold all kinds of fancy mini scales. When I asked for prices, the lady turned to the back of the store, “Mad Dog, how much is this one?” Mad Dog’s reply: “85 dol­lars. It’s marked down from 95.” I have no clue if all mini scales are priced like this, but I want to ask around to make sure I’m not pay­ing too much money for my “cof­fee reputation.”

“Is it worth the money?” I asked.

“Oh yeah.”