The coffeehouse has a history of
animated conversation and
debate, presumably because of the animating effect of
caffeine.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many states in Europe closed them down for the discussion of revolution that happenned there.
More recently, in the 1950's, they were associated with the Beat Generation and Jack Kerouac.
In Toronto the Bohemian Embassy Coffeehouse was a center for music and poetry, neatly bridgeing the gap between the beats and the hippies.
In the 1970's the Bohemian Breakdown Coffeehouse, later the Nervous Breakdown Coffeehouse (name changed due to copyright concerns), carried on the traditions of music and poetry in Toronto. I spent many nights there making simple coffee drinks with a hydrolic-powered espresso-maker.
Regretably, the revolutionary tradition of the coffeehouse has not survived its history.