Customer profle -- Waking Life Espresso
Waking Life Espresso has been open for a year now, and has already developed a reputation as the place to go for top quality espresso in Asheville. Owner Jared Rutledge moved to Australia in 2007 to attend music school and found himself working for Rob Forsyth, a former World Barista Championship judge and president of the AustralAsian Specialty Coffee Association. Rob introduced Jared to a world of coffee the young American didn't know existed. Jared honed his barista skills at Forsyth Café, Scotts Café, and Deck 23 in Sydney, and in 2009 returned to the US to open his own shop.
Waking Life is in West Asheville, one of Asheville's older
neighborhoods. Originally a town unto itself, it was annexed into
Asheville in 1917. It's listed in a 1906 Asheville City Directory
as a separate community along with South Biltmore, Grace, and Woolsey.
In decline since the 1970's, West Asheville is now enjoying a
renaissance and once again is becoming a vibrant business community and residential area.
The Waking Life staff -- David Manselle, Garret Andrews, Keith Goduti, and Amy Marbury in addition to Jared -- are very knowledgeable about coffee and espresso because Jared is extremely picky about his help. It's not easy to get a barista job at Waking Life, in part because you have to have a degree in an otherwise useless field, or be unsuited for other work. Dave has a degree in English literature, Amy in art history, Garret is still a student at UNC-A, and I'm unsure about Keith. Of course, Jared majored in philosophy. With backgrounds like those, what better career than coffee?
We roast our beans by hand in small batches, and Jared prepares his coffee the same way. Espresso is by nature a small batch brew, but Jared also brews most of his drip coffee in individual pour-overs or in french presses. For those times when those methods just aren't fast enough, there's a Fetco Extractor brewer. Even the cappuccinos and lattes are individually attended to, with the milk steamed separately for each drink. You won't find any large milk steaming pitchers in the shop.
Although Jared is a purist, you can still get a vanilla or caramel latte or a mocha there. Jared makes the vanilla, caramel, and chocolate syrups from scratch right in the shop from natural and organic ingredients.
The business end of Waking Life. The La Marzzoco espresso machine is just below the window.
The expression "waking life" originated with the philosopher George Santayana -- Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled -- but only philosophy majors actually read that sort of thing, so the name for the coffee shop more likely came from the movie Waking Life. Released in 2001 from director Richard Linklater (who's better known for Fast Food Nation and School of Rock), Roger Ebert called it
a cold shower of bracing, clarifying ideas. We feel cleansed of boredom, indifference, futility and the deadening tyranny of the mundane.
The other view is that it's the sort of drivel you hear when undergraduates have too much to drink and start speculating on the meaning of life. An interesting visual aspect of the movie is that it's "rotoscoped", an animation technique in which artists create the animation from live-action video.