Monday, March 21, 2011

Common Grounds: A 24 Hour Place for Hipsters


This is the dive bar of coffee shops. And I am blogging from there right now! I'm the one with lots of eyeliner.

Oh wait, that describes pretty much every girl here.

A 24 hour joint with free wifi (that gets pretty slow when the juggalos start downloading terabytes of pr0wn). The coffee isn't the cheapest, but the specialty drinks are good. With names like "Dirty Girl Scout" and  "The Warchief", they're good, if you can afford them. However, a two buck cup of tea and a pack of playing cards does make for a cheap night out.

Most of the clientele here doesn't really have money, though. There are games of spades and poker that go through the night. Things start to slow down around 4 or 5 am.

When I was in college I used to come here to write papers and pull all-nighters. Later on I came here when I was lonely at night and had nowhere else to go. It's really the only place in Cleveland where you can do that and end up playing spades till 5 AM with a bunch of strippers, juggalos, hustlers, and hipsters.

There's a 24 hour drug store across the street, too, conveniently. They seem to market accordingly to the crowd that hangs around this place: selling plenty of junk food, poker sets, playing cards...

Down the street, at W. 150th St. there's a 24 hour Taco Bell and McDonalds.

Please note: on Google Businesses this place was once known as "Common Grounds Coffee Bar and Homeless Shelter". It is not really a homeless shelter, although you will find plenty of kids here who simply have no place to go.

If you're looking for a quiet, high-class, Starbucks-esque coffee experience.... go somewhere else. You can find them at 17104 Lorain Ave, Cleveland, OH 44111 in the Kamms Corners neighborhood. That's the far west side, maybe 20 minutes out of downtown on the Freeway.

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