Barista Society – CLOSED
$ Coffee & Tea, Bakeries, Breakfast & Brunch
300 S Grand Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90071
Barista Society is located on a weird plane where it is parallel to Grand Ave but underneath it. It is located in the botched plastic surgery area of Los Angeles known as Bunker Hill. The way to describe getting to Barista Society is to describe the top of Bunker Hill. Bunker Hill constitutes large insular office cubes that were put in place of the many Victorian buildings that were razed and destroyed over half a century ago for more modern buildings.
Sixty, seventy years ago, Grand Ave on Bunker Hill looked like Van Ness Street in San Francisco. There are beautiful POV videos of Bunker Hill on YouTube taken in the 1940s. And now the razed and flattened plots of land brought these walkways and ‘plazas’ to get into each of these large lifeless buildings. So you sort of have to drift into this shopping center, like the 7th Street Metro Center subway station, but without really knowing where you’re going. And then you find yourself walking parallel to storefronts that face away from the subterranean level of Grand Avenue. And that is this shopping center and this Barista Society is shining right in the middle of it. It’s really the only un-sad thing in this area.
So in other words – coffee doesn’t sound too bad when you’re overly confronted with this ugly modicum of a lobby for the towering building with its shallow ceiling and mall foodcourt style seating. The cold brew here, like at all the other Barista Societies, is excellent by the way.
I came here at some point last year for a Yelp Elite event for some Ivy League venture capitalist’s marijuana dispensary speech. And the free food/drinks kept the large majority of us listening to the future of the marijuana commodity fetish in California. It’s probably the largest number of people they’ve seen at one time. I would otherwise never go out of my way to come here. But when I find myself here due to some hot iron probing me to be here (like lawyers, court, etc), it’s the best coffee option close enough to the top of the hill. And whatever other required and slightly dreadful white-collar tasks that people visit this area for, there’s at least good coffee close by! There IS the MOCA next door if you exit this lobby and then exit this plaza that may leave you wanting to have this place on your radar.
Barista Society, it’s kind of on top of Bunker Hill but on a shallow grave level.
Useful: 3 Funny: 3 Cool: 4
3/21/2018