I’ve been going out to get coffee in the mornings on the weekend. I think there is something grounding and important that happens when you engage with the specificity of a place. In modern America, this can be surprisingly difficult to do. How many shopping centers exist that consist of a Barnes and Noble, a Chipotle, a Target, and all the other usual suspects? If you take a trip across the country, it sure feels like a lot.

That’s something I’ve been thinking about often on these weekends, how so much of modern America can feel placeless. Growing up in Pennsylvania, I watched it happen in real time. Where I grew up, there was a large hill by my house. When I was in my teens, it was transformed into a shopping center. They built a large artisan grocery store on the hilltop, and I worked there in my 20s. It was a space that wasn’t grounded in anything. While technically we were in western Pennsylvania, standing in the parking lot next to chain restaurants and dollar stores and a large AMC cinema, you could have just as easily thought you were in a shopping center in Maryland or Michigan. Once you stepped inside one of these stores, the sense of place erodes even more, as there is no longer any differentiation between palm or pine trees or greenery and desert. A Barnes and Noble in Phoenix looks just like one in Columbus, OH by design. These stores work almost like casinos, they exist to disorient and entrance. They don’t just want some of your attention, they want it all.

They exist to distract you from the reality of being alive and the messiness that comes with it. They promote a version of reality that is uniform, predictable, and mostly unchanging. They don’t exist to create real excitement, but to provide a service and to quell anxieties.

But I am lucky now to live in a place where there are lots of options besides national chains. I’ve wanted to explore more of these, so I thought I would set a goal for myself. Every weekend, I would need to go to a new coffee shop to get my morning cup to start my day. I figured this was a good goal, as I would be having a cup of coffee every day anyway. Why not turn it into an event and some kind of fun game? Especially when it would also allow me to explore more of my surrounding neighborhood and city and support local businesses in the process? Really it seemed like an easy decision.

So, this is what I’ve been doing for the past month or so. I’ve been to a handful of different cafes now. I’ve sipped iced matcha in a room that I didn’t feel hip enough to enter, where I also watched cartoons projected onto the side of the wall. I had a discussion about names with a young barista in a multi-story space with loads of windows and natural light. I’ve eaten at a café next to a train station filled with harried commuters.

As I’ve lived my adventures, I have felt more grounded and closer to my community and the spaces around me. The food and drinks I’ve experienced are more inconsistent than the product I would get at a Starbucks, but I’ve found moments of deliciousness and delight in what I have found. What you get in terms of product might be less predictable, but what these spaces provide immaterially – a sense of place and community – is deeply invaluable.