Them's Organic Quinoas, Mister

an oasis of cool in an island of what

Meanwhile, the blue highways are all trying to turn into Silver Lake.

Bartlesville, Oklahoma has a population of around 37,000, and comes up off the highway on the trip west to the Panhandle like an urban island in a sea of grass, causing one’s teenage daughter to sigh heavily when one hits the turn signal and indicates a desire to check out the downtown area. I looked up the politics of the town, and here’s the red/blue balance:

So just a little bit redder than the other color. It’s oil country; the industry does research there. Business is cows and West Texas Intermediate. Their guy in the state House is a cattle rancher, and the town is represented at every level by conservative Republicans. In a thing that never happens where I live, the elected officials are middle-aged white guys, the end. Well, except for Julie Daniels.

I cropped a couple out to save space, but they’re middle-aged white guys

Here’s where I got coffee in Bartlesville this morning:

They’re currently featuring their single-origin Guatemala Huehuetenango Candelaria. “Tasting Notes:  Caramel, Dark Chocolate, Red Apple.”

Everywhere has a brewpub, everywhere has a coffee place like this, everywhere has locally-sourced artisanal charcuterie. I don’t object to this — because, I mean, I live like this, in the middle of all this stuff at its point of obnoxious origin, and I get decent charcuterie out of the deal. But twee craft fooderies are becoming the Panera Bread of Middle America, the “oh look, another one” of road tripping. Augusta, Kansas — population 9,000 and change — has a downtown brewpub next to a downtown brewpub. In Bartlesville, right after I got that cup of coffee, we drove around the corner and found a restaurant called “The Eatery.” Yes, you can get your panini with fig jam.

But it’s not clear to me where the demand is coming from, and this is the interesting part. The cultural signals seem to be driving the change in ways that don’t invariably reflect the business prospects.

If you remember what I wrote last year about Humboldt, Kansas, the New York Times announced that the town of about 1,500 people was “becoming an unexpected and affordable oasis of cool surrounded by fields of wheat and soybeans.” Farms, uncool; latte place and bespoke cocktail lounge, cool. Humboldt is telling a loud and proud story about itself, a version of which you can watch in a short video here. The town has a stunning number of things going on, and wants you to know it: whiskey bar, sophisticated coffee place, live music, new hotel, new brewpub, and on and on and on.

Meanwhile, and now I’m just repeating what I said last year, I just took this picture in the heart of downtown Humboldt on Sunday evening at 6:07 pm — last night — right in front of the new hotel:

There’s a big golf-themed cocktail lounge — here are its business hours:

I also went to the whiskey bar on Saturday night, which was, again, right near the hotel. They had a remarkable selection of whiskey, the largest in southeastern Kansas — I had the Whistlepig — and a crowd of me, the bartender’s girlfriend, and a couple of other people. At 10:00 on a Saturday night, which is one of the two nights a week the place is actually open. The other bar right under the second-floor hotel closed last year, hasn’t re-opened, and no longer has the name “Perrenoud’s Cocktail Bar” on the door. Meanwhile, the cavernous new barn of a brewpub is having a beer-only soft opening this week, with full service expected soon. So one bar is closed and dead, one bar is open twice a week and lightly attended, and the big new brewpub is just coming online. I…don’t get it?

Here’s an example of what the now-defunct cocktail lounge was doing:

I watched the street from my hotel room: the traffic is farm trucks. The New York Times was correct about one thing, which is that this very small town lives in a sea of farm fields. This bar died quickly.

But they persist, and a list of local projects says that an abandoned church behind the hotel… (UPDATE: I’m told I found the wrong church.)

…is going to be converted into “an ambitious concert venue, offering an intimate setting for edgy artists from folk to punk.”

In Humboldt, I bought a late-morning cup of coffee at the gas station, a couple blocks away from the place with the oat milk lattes. The woman behind the counter insisted on brewing a fresh pot, because the stuff on the counter had been sitting for a while. Most of her customers are farmers, and late morning is too late for them to go into town for coffee. But their market for edgy punk bands and blackstrap rum cocktails is endlessly expanding.

The motive force doesn’t seem to be supply and demand — here, or in many of the places where the same cultural flags are being raised. Outpost Coffee would probably disagree.