java.com is a coffee shop on the campus of
Northern Arizona University. Yeah, it's called java.com. Lame, huh? Here's the story.
All on campus dining is handled through NAU Dining Services, which in turn whores itself out to Sodexho. Ahh, Sodexho. Another cafeteria foodservice corporation making its millions (billions?) off of providing the student body with expensive edible food. The rest of the food offered outside of java.com in the University Union is, well, ok. java.com, offering Starbucks coffee, hot sandwiches and a generous helping of wannabe coffee shop interior design is the alternative chosen by many students. It's all a rip-off, but...
java.com is home to the Jacked Up Poetry Slam.
Yeah, our home sweet home. java is really cool about letting us invade on Tuesday nights, moving couches and tables to our liking, and hooking up large PA systems though which we shout a lot. We bring in a big coffee-buying and sandwich-munching crowd, at times standing room only. They are also open late, which is nice if the Poetry Slam you are throwing always runs too long because of too much (or not enough) passion at the open mic and too much (always too much) bullshitting by the emcee. "Judges, lets see the scores. Judges? C'mon now we're going for speed not accuracy here, just assign the words that just poured from that poet's soul a numerical value and lets be done with it!" But what's a poetry slam without the bullshit, really? Just a microphone and a series of awkward silences...
unless it's a good one, then it's dynamite in a oil refinery, kayo in the crackbox, soul for show, laughter, tnt and angst in your pants.
java.com is the setting for many memories and many in the making. Long live the shitty Sodexho as long as the open mic draws didgeridoos and the poets be slammin'.