Years ago, I quit coffee like I did drugs. But I recently relapsed. Coffee shops with sophisticated, single-origin pour-overs are all over Oakland.

On my last trip to Piedmont Avenue, I parked my car directly across from Blue Bottle, a corporate establishment that never fails to lure me in. It was early. So early that I didn’t bother with the parking meter because the streets were empty, and I sometimes like to roll the dice with these things. There were only a few souls outside, Oaklanders beginning their usual morning routines: a woman walking her border terrier, a nurse hustling to the hospital down the block, a man down on his luck staring blankly at the foggy sky. I felt complicit in this love for the secret quiet of the morning, the way it always felt pregnant with possibility no matter what the day before might have brought.