“Caffe Espresso Young Intellectual Hangout”, November 12th, 1958. An article about what we’re told was Portland’s very first espresso shop. Which was a crucial milestone in Portland’s history, although no one seems to have recognized that at the time. Caffe Espresso, at SW 6th & Hall on the PSU campus, was the brainchild of one Karl Leopold Metzenberg, an ex-Reedie who’d encountered espresso shops in LA and San Francisco and thought Portland was ripe for one of its own:

I think people here are learning that the city is growing in sophistication. Many persons with good taste and money are moving here. This is indicative of a trend toward greater sophistication … of imported pleasures. I think Portland has been too long a seat of Northwest conservatism and it is drifting away from that,“ he asserted.

Which may have been true even that long ago, but much of the article is devoted to reassuring the general public that the cafe’s patrons were absolutely, positively Not Beatniks. Although the way the article describes them and their interests, they seem exceedingly similar to beatniks. And to 2011 hipsters for that matter, except for the absence of MacBooks and a strong interest in Sigmund Freud, a perplexing aspect of beatnikdom that’s thankfully almost extinct in the wild these days.

The article concludes quite mysteriously:

"When I conceived of the caffe, I had in mind a relaxed sidewalk cafe where people might read the New York Times, The Oregonian, and the Manchester Guardian. What I have, it seems, is a nightclub without booze. Don’t ask me how this can be. It is. "There are snake pit aspects of the operation but perhaps that should be left out of print: an upholstery salesman might harangue me to let him pad the walls.”

Hmm. What on earth could that mean?