When Marsha Glazière returned to Washington from a six-year "artistic sabbatical" on the coast of Florida, she found herself unhappy in the stressful, crowded urban center of Seattle, so she moved to a calmer, quieter place. Not to hippy-dippy North Bend or Duvall or Whidbey but to the blue-collar community of Tacoma.
Landscapes, architectural abstractions, horses became her subjects. Then she branched out. Over a three-year period, she began seeking out, photographing, and committing to canvas a series of artisanal coffee shops around Puget Sound, visiting over 200 in all and selecting 120 for her book, Eclectic Coffee Spots in Puget Sound. While coffee shops have always been part of modern urban environments (and over 50 of the shops that made the cut are in Seattle proper), Glazière's research turned up dozens of off-the-beaten-track spots: La Crema Coffee & Roastery in La Conner; Useless Bay Coffee Co. on Whidbey Island; the Mandolin Cafe in Tacoma. Sometimes Glazière records the past; the Old Silverdeli Coffee Shop in Silverdale was painted before it became a hair salon.
This isn't a rigidly edited guidebook; Glazière shuffles photographs, paintings, recipes and musings according to her own rules, but it's a fine addition to anyone's collection of the region's most charming cultural institutions and icons. The attractions of coffee and the importance of coffee shops as Third Place community centers have found a worthy voice in Glazière's handsome book.
And if you're so inclined, you can even go around, collect receipts from the shops in her book and enter her "coffee safari".
Marsha Glazière at Verace Coffee on Capitol Hill with her painting of the Pegasus Coffee Shop on Bainbridge Island.
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