Newtown was the epicentre of the Sydney coffee boom from about 2005-2010. This coincided with my uni days, while I was living in Newtown for the first time and frequenting all these groovy little cafes started by hipsters with a passion for coffee, a hoard of retro kitsch, and the naive assumption that that was all you needed. At the end of this boom, most of them either closed up or were bought out by investors with all the business sense their predecessors lacked, and the equally naive assumption that that was all you needed. These days, there are heaps of these once-cool cafes that have had everything good stripped out of them in the name of a more profitable business, and have more-or-less managed to coast along fuelled by the existing customer base who didn’t care enough to go elsewhere. If you’re lucky, these places may have kept the old name or retained something of their original menu and might be trying to copy the same style, but this is usually done in an average, cost-efficient way. Many of the cafes I visit are sadly just like this, but I guess it’s just business and I’m still going to expect a 0, 0. Besides, there need to be places for all the customers who just want something quick and easy in order to free up the really good places for those who plan on giving the coffee a brutal rating out of 1 😉