Coffee in Worcester: Super Variety

This week, we talked with Bruce about Super Variety, a conveniece store across from Commerce Bank at 375 Main Street.

IMGA0103

Pie and Coffee: Super Variety has Green Mountain coffee.

Bruce: That coffee was pretty good.

P: I love that place!

B: I think that coffee has got a snap to it.

P: Green Mountain in general?

B: No, at that particular place.

P: You had a coffee “suicide” one time. You had every kind of coffee in one cup.

B: Because I couldn’t get a full cup out of any one of them.

P: We went in the afternoon, so they were running low in the thermoses.

B: When I get coffee from Joe’s it’s really bitter and lukewarm, it only stayed warm for two seconds maybe.

P: Joe’s has Green Mountain too?

B: Yeah.

P: I like Super Variety because it’s the most convenient place for me. It’s right by my work. When I need to buy snacks or envelopes, I used to go to the CVS, but it’s just horrible. It’s either really crowded, or there’s nobody at the counter. I’ve had to wait ten minutes to buy a bag of Fritos at CVS. And all the staff are in a bad mood. I think it’s a badly-managed store.

B: Yeah, I think so.

P: Super Variety, on the other hand, occasionally there’s another person in line. It’s well-staffed. The dude is there, he knows what’s going on.

B: You can find what you’re looking for.

P: He’s in a good mood.

B: I went to get some paper there, and found exactly what I was looking for. When I went to CVS down on Front Street, I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

P: Yeah. So I’m a big booster of Super Variety now. I’m an enthusiast.

I wanted to ask you about a report in the news. “Heavy metal ‘a comfort for the bright child’.”

Intelligent teenagers often listen to heavy metal music to cope with the pressures associated with being talented, according to research.

The results of a study of more than 1,000 of the brightest five per cent of young people will come as relief to parents whose offspring, usually long-haired, are devotees of Iron Maiden, AC/DC and their musical descendants.

Researchers found that, far from being a sign of delinquency and poor academic ability, many adolescent “metalheads” are extremely bright and often use the music to help them deal with the stresses and strains of being gifted social outsiders.

B: I watched “The Metal Journey.” And the guy was doing this documentary of heavy metal. (Of course it started in the birthplace of Birmingham.) And he was talking about that heavy metal celebrates things that we often ignore, and talks about things we’d rather forget or run away from.

P: You think heavy metal can relieve the stress of being a gifted social outsider?

B: Yeah. Cause anybody who listens to heavy metal or goes to a heavy metal concert, they feel like it’s one big army. Everybody’s there as metal brothers and sisters. People who love it, play it, do it for a living, are often underestimated. And heavy metal will never get the respect that it deserves.

P: Y’know, I think I was a gifted social outsider, but I didn’t start listening to metal till I was out of college. And I never found a good stress outlet, and that’s why I’m screwed up till this day.

There’s something else I about Super Variety I want to bring up.

B: What’s that?

P: There are places with better coffee and worse coffee, but oftentimes the differences in coffee are not that big. The differences in your experience of a place are very big. The other factors. And you’re one of the strongest advocates of this. You opened my mind to this idea, because you’ve talked about how much you like the White Hen, that the coffee may not be your very most favorite coffee, but it’s your favorite coffee place because it’s a good place to go for so many other reasons.

B: Right. You just gave me a perfect reason why . . . we always talk about how we haven’t really found a bad cup of coffee in Worcester? Thank you for bringing this up to my attention. I think what really makes a bad cup of coffee is when you go to a place, and the people aren’t very nice, or are having a bad day, you get a lousy cup of coffee.

P: Because your whole experience of the place is not good.

B: Right.

P: So your experience of drinking that cup is not good.

B: Right.

P: Flavor is a big part of it, but it’s not the whole thing.

So you were at the big peace march.

B: Yes I was.

P: What did you think about that?

B: I was just trying to keep it together. I was going to burst out bawling when that woman was talking about her brother who committed suicide with a hose. To me, it’s just like a wasted life, and I’m sure if you ask anyone else’s opinion around the world they’ll agree with what I’m saying. Because whether it’s an American life or a Swedish life or whatever, to me it’s just a wasted life.

P: You want to move on to a lighter topic? You have an interesting track that people should check out that you were doing as a theme song for the new “Legal Assistance” show on channel 13. They didn’t end up using it, but I think it’s well worth listening to. {mp3 of “Legal A”}

And you’ve responded constructively to getting dissed by Legal Assistance. You have this idea for your own show and theme song now.

B: Right.

P: What’s the lyric?

B:
First you had the Snow Ghost
On top of a Silver Mountain
Now the Ghost is your community host
Hopes to get the most out of you
If you want a better world, it starts with you

P: That’s a great theme song.

B: You know what Nick said to me yesterday? “I heard you’re doing your own show.” I shoulda said, “Yeah! It’s not a rumor, because I don’t make rumors, I only create new history.”

P: That’s a good attitude.

B: I got some songs here for my album for the month of October. “The Feast of the Dead.” “The Blasphemous Evil Spirit.” “Human Sacrifices.” “Sacrifices of the Dead,” and “Warn Off Evil Spirits.” “Fires in the Wind.” “Candles in the Window.” “Devil’s Night.” “Sacrifice the Dead.” Here’s a great saying I came up with today, man. I think you oughta write this down.

P: I’m recording it!

B: The only thing that’s kept me young and kept me going is being able to share with everybody else on the journey.

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy: [interrupting] Mark Twain said, Be good and you will be lonesome.

One thought on “Coffee in Worcester: Super Variety”

  1. A while ago I was talking with a co-worker who was a teenager in the early 1970s about how she liked Black Sabbath back then, because she didn’t want to listen to the cheesy pop music, and she didn’t want to listen to the hippy stuff either. Black Sabbath was for you if you didn’t fit into the culture or the counter-culture.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.