[Michael Erlewine] These days when I visit Ann Arbor it takes twenty minutes just to drive across town. If I have one phrase to describe the difference between Ann Arbor back then and now, it is “overly caffeinated.” Today there seems to be a coffee shop on almost every corner and it makes a difference. Back then there was just one coffee house and that was Mark’s Coffee House at 605 East William Street, and for those of you who are as old as I am, you might remember the actual first bohemian “coffee house” in Ann Arbor, “The Promethean” on the other side of William Street from Mark’s and about a block west, just down from where the Cottage Inn pizza place is today. It did not last long.

[Michael Erlewine] The Promethean Coffee House served Viennese-style brewed (non-espresso) coffee, mulled cider (with cinnamon sticks!), and played jazz albums, not to mention the Shelly Berman comedy albums. Once in a while local folksingers like Al Young (today poet laureate of California) would play there. This must have been in the late 1950s. I was still in high school and I went there as often as I could just to sit around, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, look serious, and (most of all) hope that I would meet the love of my life. Nothing much really happened there aside from all of us sitting around sneaking glances at one another. And after a while it closed. It was not really much of a hangout. It was somehow too sanitized and stiff, too formal. It was a business, not a place to hang, and few of us hung there. It was uncool, not "down" or real enough.

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Promethean, Ann Arbor District Library "Old News".