The Fabricator
Last week, as the U.S. Senate debated a proposal to send every American $100 to help offset the high price of gasoline, Mayor Bill Purcell’s office quietly floated a similar proposal for Nashville—only for coffee, not gasoline.
“As coffee prices have gone up, we’ve realized that a lot of young people aren’t able to buy as much coffee from the Frothy Monkey, Bongo Java or a local Starbucks,” explains Deputy Mayor Bill Phillips. “Under this proposal, each college student in Nashville will get a $25 ‘coffee card’ to use at any coffee house in the city.”
Officials say the program, oh-so-cutely designated “Purcell’s Perk,” is similar to programs in Seattle, San Francisco and Austin.
“Big college towns need a lot of coffeehouses to maintain their ‘arty’ feel and to keep everybody awake long enough to cultivate that whole 24-hour-a-day cultural vibe,” says Belmont University’s Martha Walker, a backer of Purcell’s Perk. “We need students to be hanging out in places where they can feel comfortable wearing black from head-to-toe, staying in a booth for hours nursing a single cup of coffee, and carrying around copies of Sartre’s Nausea.
“Some of our students have learned from experience that you just can’t do that at the Thompson Lane Shoney’s.”
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Some don’t think Purcell’s Perk is all it’s brewed up to be.
“Why can’t these little philosophy-reading deadbeats buy their own coffee?” fumes Metro Council member Buck Dozier. “Nobody sent me a check for Tang when I was in college.”
But Phillips defends the idea: “I know what Buck is saying, and I like Tang, too. But a vibrant city has vibrant coffeehouses. That’s the fuel that the culture runs on, and we want Nashville to be vibrating with the energy that thousands of caffeinated young people bring.”