Coffee shop...and outdoor store.
Coffee Shop:
Ink! Coffee
http://inkcoffee.com/locations/aspen/
520 E Durant ave
Apen, CO 81611
Date Visited:
Monday, August 22, 2016
About 2:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m.
Purchased:
12 oz Almond Milk Latte: $5.85*
*It was $5.85 total. The original price was $4.55. I don't know how much of the difference was almond milk and how much was tax. They didn't offer a receipt! I looked for the charge and couldn't find it.
It's obviously too high, though. But I'm in Aspen.
Though it doesn't make it better, locally it fits in to charge extra for whatever just because people will do it. People are annoying like that.
I also would have stayed a little bit longer, but I had to go get my car. Parking is ridiculous. But I'm in Aspen.
You wouldn't get coffee here unless you were already in Aspen. But in order to have time to wander and do things like hang out at coffee shops, there are a couple of options. You can take the bus into the city from the Brush Creek Intercept Lot, where parking is free and the bus is free into Aspen (and back later). It runs frequently. You can also park in a residential area for $8 for the day. The areas are marked residential and away from the city core, but totally walkable to anywhere. There is also a parking garage, which is more expensive, and parking at pay stations in the city core, which is ridiculously ridiculous. It goes up more each hour you purchase. It's not even an option.
You can also park in the residential areas for free for two hours. If you want an additional 2 hours, you have to move your car to a different zone, not just around the block, but it's not that bad. This is what I did during the Ink! visit, so i had to get back to my car by 4:00.
The experience was a bit better than my previous Ink! experience (16th st mall in Denver), but not by a lot. The latte tasted a bit better in Denver actually, but the latte experience was such a weird fiasco there that neither place comes out ahead. They were very automatically going for the paper cups, but I asked for a "for here" cup and they did have it. Though it definitely wasn't the norm. You can see that not much care was put into the latte art even in the nicer cup...
Ha.
It was decent. Not great, but better than some. Espresso-wise, it smelled nice. The taste wasn't very memorable and the smell unfortunately didn't linger. Overall, everything was pretty average.
The shop was an okay place to work, but not great. It's kind of awesome because it's also an outdoor store. They have backpacks, bike stuff, hike stuff, ski stuff, lots of stuff. It is very close to the gondola on the mountain and I'm sure it's busy in the winter. The shop has kind of a retail feel, which the outdoor stuff contributed to.
There were no really comfy places to sit, but it wasn't bad. The furniture is kind of old or used, torn and stuff. No place felt "out of the way". It was kind of hard to get in the zone of working. The atmosphere was okay for some quick tasks, but pretty bad for creativity. The outdoor area was fairly nice, though I didn't sit there. It wasn't special for Aspen, since most outdoor places in Aspen are nice because there is a beautiful mountain view everywhere and there's a relaxed vibe. So Ink! naturally has that. The seating was also back from the road and down some stairs, which is nice since the road is a through street.
The paper-cup-default-not-latte-art fit with the atmosphere. It's not really tailored to sit and savor. I'm sure it thrives as a great place to stop in and get a hot drink and warm up and talk for half an hour after skiing or something. So the context definitely affects things. The shop isn't classy-craft-delicious-comfy-coffee-atmosphere, but it's not bad for what it is. Although I expected more from Ink! in general given their blurbs on roasting coffee, quality, etc. It definitely trends chain-like. Maybe that has shifted over time, but if it maintained non-chain roots anywhere I would have expected it at the original shop.
I wouldn't specially return, but I wouldn't be especially opposed if it came up. The experience was pretty neutral, but more Aspen-expensive. I didn't like hanging out there that much. It also wasn't great for work, and there was stuff going on that detracted from the atmosphere, but it's not bad for Aspen. There isn't a place in the area that's significantly better that I know of. So for the local area it's the norm, but compared to the Denver-norm it's not great.
No wi-fi issues.
