GRUMPIES IN LOVE: A Barista Plays Matchmaker

Looking for the loving and lonely-hearted? The shy bespectacled good guys? The overeducated, cynical girls? They’re not at bars, flirting with the waitstaff, dancing under strobes, they’re at coffee shops—begrudging their conditions, going off to bed alone. This is what a barista at Greenpoint coffeehouse Grumpy’s noticed of her regular clientele. Though she was privileged enough to be able to talk to everyone, they’d never speak with each other.
“I had customers who told me about the sexual tension that goes on in the café, behind the computers,” barista Kira Birney explained. “The same people sit here every day, not interacting.” That doesn’t happen in an office or at school between roommates or among neighbors. It is the sad anonymity of New York’s coffee shops: the quietest, most crowded places outside of the subway cars. And Birney, an artist who enjoys art projects with an element of social experimentation, sought a simple, provocative solution.
This Valentine’s Day, she had her regular customers pose for Polaroid photos, free of charge, which she posted to the wall and numbered—1 through 33—like a roster of models for a nerdy fashion show. Anyone with a crush need only pay $5 to write a note to the regular. Those lucky enough to receive notes also got a $4 gift certificate to take their admirer out to coffee at Grumpy’s. Based on the concept of candy grams—a pay-per-love-note scheme conjured up by High School fundraisers and subscribed to by the admirers of cheerleaders—Birney called her concept “coffee grams.” Though Birney says she loves her job, “It can get boring.” This, surely, would spice things up.

“I wanted people to get out of their shells,” Birney said. “I was convinced that shyness would go away.”
A rockier road appeared when even some of the regular customers—who themselves had admitted crushes—refused to pose even for a photograph. “It’s crazy,” she said. “People are still too shy.” The result? On sunny Valentine’s Day morning, of the 33 customers who opted to be photographed, only six received paid-for “coffeegrams” from secret admirers. Still—that could be six new couples. “If it works,” Birney said, “It could be bad for business.” She’s sure that some regulars come in, day after day, in the hopes of seeing their crush.
Knowing the majority of the envelopes were noteless was hard for Birney, who had to watch customers come to pick theirs up. “It was funny how people wouldn’t open them in front of me,” she noted. “They would sneak out and read it later.” It’s all an example of how she feels people are “afraid of love;” afraid to talk to each other in the coffeeshop, afraid to interact. “They’re too heavy about it.”

Still, lots of people let her know they enjoyed the concept. “I think I put a bug in the world—or a heart in the world,” she said. A former art teacher, Birney had decorated the café with paper hearts. “I’m anti those anti-valentines parties,” she explained. “How can you not be happy cutting out hearts?”