Teacrawl in Santa Cruz

by mo on 06/26/2009

So two years into college, we’ve gotten the whole barcrawl thing down. Some random Tuesday, we all wear matching shirts, 1 bar per hour until closing time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, old news.

But last night, I embarked on a new kind of nighttime journey: the teacrawl. Same principle of course, but replace the bars with cafes, the bartenders with baristas.

Bhargav and Mukund made their way down from San Jose, just to check the whole Santa Cruz thing out I ‘spose. Unfortunately, I realized yesterday that my roommate Sarah and I had a Yoga class to attend that night. Luckily, Bhargav rolled with it and partook in some free yoga, and Mukund requested that we drop him off at the Santa Cruz hangout, Cafe Pergolesi.

An hour and a half later, we were stretched out, in our zone, and ready for the teacrawl.

After reuniting with Mukund, we made our way to Pacific Thai, since we had intended to find bubble/boba tea (depending on what you call it). They make you choose a tea base (green or black) and choose iced or blended (whether they just put ice in, or they make it more smoothie-like with the ice blended in). The flavors were fine, but nothing special I’d say — we tried Jasmine, which was good, Avocado, which was subtle, and Thai iced tea, which was exactly what you would expect — thai iced tea with boba (go figure). Delightful boba though. Not too big, chewy, or icy.

Here is Mukund eagerly anticipating what his avocado boba tea will taste like, as Bhargav swoops in:
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But Pacific Thai wasn’t much of a hangout. So we crawled. Downtown SC.

Clock tower:
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Building at the end of Pacific, the main downtown street. No, Jamba Juice is NOT part of any teacrawl.
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Then we walked by every cafe on Pacific, and checked how late they were open. This was at 9:30pm. Almost all of them closed at 10. This is simply not acceptable! I’m usually offended that Espresso closes at MIDNIGHT! Come on now, cafes.

So, after passing up several other options due to early closing times, including Bad Ass Coffee, which I went to with Joey on my very first day in SC, we decided to head back to Cafe Pergolesi, where Mukund had spent some time.

And thus the sugar explosion began.
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A hot chai, a mint papaya tea, an iced chai, and cookies, flavored roughly as chocolate/coconut/some kinda nut, “Mexican Mocha”, and chocolate/peanut butter/some kind of nut… I don’t know. It was a pretty epic order, and made me feel like we had some assembly to program in the middle of the night or something.
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This place is pretty cool. Too cool for school. Too cool for us, probably. Some foreign hip-hop was playing the entire time. And very, very Santa Cruz. The chalkboard back there says, “dude, I know this is Santa Cruz, but please, no dope smokin’ on the patio. Thanks”
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Cafe Pergolesi is too cool to have standardized seating. Bhargav’s chair was about four feet below our table. Which is okay I guess, if you have chai to worship.
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This chai was friggin’ AMAZING. It was the most spiced chai I’ve ever had — left your throat all tingly! And just the right amount of foam. Yummmm to the max.
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Bhargav summons the power of the iced chai, which was kind of too milky and not as intense as my SPICY CHAI of wonder and amazement.
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After another hour of chilling, our favorite barista said we had to leave so he could go kill zombies, and thus ended the epic June ’09 Santa Cruz Teacrawl.

This must be repeated.