We went to the discount store yesterday to buy a French press and spotted a stainless steel, stove-top percolator. It looks like, and sort of is, a piece of camping equipment. Boy Scouts would use it, if they took coffee breaks. It seemed American, as opposed to the Frenchy-ness of the French press. Also, a goomba passing in the aisle said, “Best way to make coffee…if you like it good and strong.”

I drank three cups of percolated coffee this morning and feel like I am going to explode with happiness and nerves. I feel as if I will disco to the subway train. The guy is right. The coffee is strong, and it is good.

Now try Googling “percolated coffee”. The internet thinks I’m doing it wrong, that I should have gone for the French press. Even the Wikipedia entry sniffs that percolated coffee is out of fashion. It’s weird; now I feel like I’ve been outrageously rebellious buying this percolator. After all, everyone who knows anything about coffee knows that this is an inferior method. And caring about your coffee is one of those markers, you know, of intelligence and sophistication. I bet if you mapped out the percolator households and the French press households, they would perfectly correlate with a map of blue states and red states. French presses are for liberals, percolators are for heathens.

But for how long? I predict within 18 months, percolators will become huge. Hipsters, tired of their espresso-brewed triple Americanos, will develop an ironic appreciation for percolated coffee. A percolator will be featured in some sort of spread in Vice, and a few months later we’ll see a percolator on the front page of Sunday Styles. And then William-Sonoma will come out with a $429 retro stovetop percolator, and I’ll sell my vintage model on eBay and use the proceeds to buy myself a shiny new espresso maker.

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