Backlash (November 1990)
(this is just a small part of a larger article - the 3rd Annual Coffee Tour - featuring little interviews with multiple people of note in various coffee spots)
THE GRAND ILLUSION WITH KRISTEN BARRY
Funny, but Last Exit stories suddenly seem to be coming out of the woodwork.
"I was trying to get a job, and I go in there thinking 'This is gonna be cool,'" begins our next guest, the massively charming Kristen Barry. "They needed someone to do espresso in the morning, I was pretty happy; I had all the credentials; I've got my whole resume and everything.
"So I go in there and talk to him (the guy who "chatted" with our photographer earlier), and he likes me, we hit it off; and then he looks at my application and asks, 'You worked at the Roma?' I said, 'Yeah', and he says 'I'm sorry, I can't hire you. I make it company policy to never hire anyone who's worked at the Roma.'"
However, she admits that such a policy may not be utterly without foundation. "I think he's afraid because - you've tasted Roma coffee, right?"
Kristen and I are conversing at neither the Roma nor Exit. We are at the quietest coffee house in the Western World, the Grand Illusion, where she is downing cup after cup of joe (perhaps under the mistaken impression that there would be prizes).
"I just got back from Smog City, where they don't have good coffee, so I'm catching up. But you know how everything down there is so excessive? Well, now they're figuring out the whole coffee thing, but they have to make it, like, a coffee club. You go and get a latte and it's 'three twenty-five, please.'"
As far as music is concerned, "It's becoming more and more my friend. I don't need to push it, force it, paint it, color it, or whatever, just let it happen." Training to be a classical pianist at an early age, she discovered rock, and when the mid-'80s New British Invasion hit, realized the expanding role ivory-ticklers would have. "In a way, I'm totally grateful for all that cheesy shit."
She's driven, but occasionally lets distractions distract her. Recently, she even partook in a rich American tradition, "I watched my first football game. I sat in front of the TV with a bud and I belched five or six times and I really felt like a football fan."
Moving forward the denouement of the proceeding, the Grand Illusion experience is evaluated. "The coffee was good and the cream was good and fresh. It's very lovely. If I ever had a date, I would take him here."
So, bidding farewell to this last of my caffeine companions, I proceed alone to make some sense of it all.
by Michael Cox
