Dawson Taylor Coffee Roasters = Hip.

          I-am-not-a-hipster. I-am-not-a-hipster. I-am-NOT-a-HIPSTER.  My morning mantra, repeated over-and-over again as I smoke a Marlboro Red 100 cigarette outside of Dawson Taylor's downtown location on the corner of 8^th St. and Bannock, sipping my large drip coffee with all the fixings. My brain is busy repeating it's mantra, struggling from the primordial ooze that it always is anytime before noon, leaving me free to people-watch. I observe the mix of street-urchin riff-raff, Hipster-Elite, business men and women, elderly, artists, writers, homeless denizens of Boise, all of them in need of a caffeine boost and a few minutes out of the winter's cold to get the day started on the right foot.

          If a place, rather than a person, can be considered truly Hip, I would say Dawson Taylor fits the description. But a place, a thing, can't really be Hip of it's own accord, can it?

          The coffee at Dawson Taylor's is good, but it's not that good.

          It's an inanimate, lifeless building, with no self-control over its own appearance from day-to-day, week-to-week, year after year. So people must make it Hip.

          Going by that logic, whatever it is that makes Dawson Taylor's Hip can be used as a definition for Hip, itself.

          I think that's called the Aristocratic Method? I don't know. I failed Philosophy.

          Dawson Taylor's is one of downtown Boise's most popular places to see and be scene. Key movers-and-shakers in Boise's local art and music scenes loiter, sometimes for hours, at Dawson's.

          It's enough to make me wonder if they even have homes to go home to.

          Maybe they just can't afford a coffee-pot. Could something as simple as a coffee-pot be beyond the means of the starving artist? Or are they just too plagued by creativity to make their own damn coffee?

Dawson Taylor's is also conveniently located. Seriously, I can't tell you how many times I've planned to meet up with friends downtown and heard, “So do you want to just meet up at Dawson's?”

          Even in the middle of the night, long after closing.

          It's because literally anybody who's anybody goes there, or will go there, drawn by some kind of Hip gravitation force. Hip, by it's very nature, must go to Hip. I don't remember who said that, exactly. I failed Physics too.

          Dawson Taylor's used to be fairly cheap, compared to some of the large coffee-franchises, like Starbucks, or Moxie Java. Their prices have steadily crept up over the past year or so to the point where now they're only slightly cheaper than their big-name competitors. In the good-old-days, you could get free refills on drip coffee all day long, until you were so jacked up on caffeine that smoking meth started to sound like an alternative way to go to sleep. Now, it's fifty-cents for a refill, and unless you know someone who works there, you only get one before you have to buy another cup.

          So what is Hip? Hip is something that's easily visible, easily accessible, and cheap, but not free.

          I think that's what Hip is. But then again, that could just be the coffee talking.