Coffee League Review: Cafe Delirium

Address

308 N Main Ave
Gresham, OR 97030
(503) 666-2002

Music

Top-40 pop played through a black Macbook located behind the counter. This is actually the first coffee shop I’ve been to in Portland Gresham (oops, this isn’t Portland) that does not feature indie rock music.

Ambient Noise

Medium-low. People are actually talking to and hang around each other, instead of coworking like we usually do. It’s a relief to see, actually.

Overall Ambience

Easy and non-distracting, perfect if you want to actually get work done and not be interrupted by the music.

Food Selection

Standard café fares: cookies, pastries, breads.

Seating

This is where Cafe Delirium excels. It has a space so big, it may actually be able to contain a large group of bandwidth-hungry, coworking tweeples and their family members—and still leave some room for chatters.

This cafe will comfortably seat 30 people.

Size

Bigger than your average, inner-city located coffee shops.

Wireless

Yes, and it’s blazing fast—partly because hardly anyone connects to the ’net.

Wireless Strength and Throughput

I’m clocking at 5Mbps/768Kbps. No port is blocked.

Electrical Plugs

Enough to power your laptop, your iPhone, and your iPhone’s iPhone.

Coffee Quality

This is where Cafe Delirium lacks. It’s good, but not great.

Coffee Choices

Mixed syrup drinks are abound, and you can get a “White Russian,” which they label as a coffee made with “White Mocha w/ Kahlua.”

Coffee Kick

I can hold my own for most of tonight’s #afterhours.

Comfy Chairs

Lounge-style seating, with plenty of comfy couches.

Workspace

Heck, yeah. Bring your laptop, books and supporting materials. The table will likely suffice.

Price

I was able to get a small Americano for $1.85 – this is marginally cheaper than the $2 that most places would charge for one.

Currency Formats

Cash, Card, no card limit.

Times

Everyday until 9:00 pm.

Website

None, sadly.

Introducing The Coffee League Review Series

Good evening.

Several months ago, I wrote A Field Guide To Coffee Shops Around Northwest Portland, Particularly The Pearl District Neighborhood. This article garnered a lot of interest from our readers, that several of them contacted me about doing a serialized, decentralized coffee shop reviews. David Burn first took this initiative and started the Puddle Jumping Coffee Freaks flickr group.

I thought that a presentation like the PDX Coffee Shops wiki would be the best avenue to (pardon) serve this content, but realized that more personal reviews from individuals can only be captured via a blog post.

Adron B. Hall (@adronbh) resounded this idea about a week ago, made a more detailed metrics to analyze coffee shops by, and even volunteered to start a loosely series of post called “Coffee League Review.”

Why loose? Because anyone can join freely and start reviewing coffee shops in her own way. Just tag it with “Coffee League Review,” and you’re good to go.

The idea is this: one of us may have no time to review every coffee shop in Portland. But combine our writing skills together with our passion for coffee, and we could probably have a decently complete guide to coffee shops around Portland—be it in the wiki, or individual blogs.

(And I could’ve sworn that I wasn’t really into coffee until I started this whole coworking deal.)

So I’m looking forward to more caffeination. What about you?

Portland Creative/Tech Event Listing For The Week Of February 16-22, 2009

Since last week is so full of events (notwithstanding the Wednesday event explosion,) you’d think that this week in Portland tech will be more quiet, huh?

Think again.

Monday, February 16, 2009

DorkbotPDX Meeting, “an evening of socializing, talking about odd hacks and poking around with other people toys.” At Lucky Lab Pub NW, from 7-11 pm.

Recurring: Yes. Bi-weekly (thanks, Thomas Lockney.)

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

AIGA Career Tools, at Elephant’s Deli on NW 23rd, from 8-9:30 am.

If you dare to wake up early enough for this event, you’ll get the treat of seeing eROI’s Ryan Buchanan, Steve Sandstrom, CincoDesign’s Kirk James, 52ltd.’s Steve Potestio, W+K’s Sean O’Brien, Makelike’s Mary Kysar, Attensa’s Scott Niesen and Second Story’s Julie Beeler duke it out in a battle, err, chatter of managing business in the current economy.

UIE Roadshow: Secrets Behind Designing Great User Experiences (with frakking Jared Spool!) at Marriott Waterfront, from 9-4 pm.

IxDA Portland: Interaction’09 Conference Recap (also with Jared Spool. Man, he’s a busy guy!), at McFadden’s Pub, at 6:30 pm.

Startup Exchange Meetup, “an invite only group where ideas can be circulated between entrepreneurs,” at Chime Software, at 4:00 pm.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea about this event, but I thought that their mantra of “sorry services providers you can’t attend” is rather interesting.

Portland Java User Group, at Oracle, from 6:30-8 pm.

Recurring: Yes. Every third Tuesday of the month.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

An introduction to Trust the Vote! Open Source Digital Voting Foundation project, presented by OSU’s Open Source Lab (OSL) and Portland Open Source Entrepreneurs (POSSE,) at CubeSpace, from 6-8 pm.

Open Source Geospatial Users Group, starting again after a 2-year hiatus. At OpenSourcery (remember, they’re now located on NW Portland,) at 6:30 pm.

Recurring: Yes. Third Wednesday of the month.

BackFence PDX, a live storytelling event, at McMenamins Mission Theater, from 7-9 pm.

Recurring: Yes, once every two months, I think.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Ignite Portland 5, at the Bagdad Theater, from 5:30 pm

If you can only go to one event in Portland, make it this one. Stand in line two hours prior, even. It’s worth it. You’ll see the most interesting speakers in Portland (most of which you probably follow on Twitter) speaking about subjects they love the most for exactly 5 minutes. You’ll even hear a certified type nerd typographer talk about the entire history of type founding secret history of fonts you may not know before.

Friday-Sunday, February 20-22, 2009

RecentChangesCamp, an unconference for the wiki community.

This unconference is so educational, you’ll brag to your friend that you actually met the inventor of the wiki, studied with folks behind the first wiki community, and learnt all the wiki secrets in one weekend.

Okay, the real secret about the wiki is that it isn’t that hard to master in the first place, but they don’t know that.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

DorkbotPDX Focused Workshop: Breadboard a Sanguino, at PNCA, from 1-5 pm.

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