CTRL+POUR: 2.0
From Glitter Cat to Event Horizon: The ARG That Never Was
Half a decade in the coffee industry and I've learned one thing: Our smallest of choices can have the largest of impacts. Through coffee, I’ve met thousands of faces, all of which have impacted me in ways I’ve yet to fathom.
Intro 2.0
I'm Aireus Robinson, a twenty-six-year-old who wears as many hats as I've had cycles around the sun. Music Producer & Audio Engineer, Barista, Bartender, Mixologist, Journalist, Writer, AI Integrator, Conspiracy Theorist, Student, Coffee Educator, and Experience Designer.
While these titles do not define me, they’ve aided in developing my unique approach to user-experiences and user-interface/interaction (UX/UI).
The Hyperbolic Time Chamber
Early on in my career (and even now) there are moments where I find myself without a job to provide me a steady-income. In these instances, I've relied on platforms such as Pared, cups , and Instawork to cover my rent. Money-aside, these apps allowed me to explore the operations of over a dozen coffee shops in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Atlanta alike; providing me direct experience into the differing visages of coffee culture.
While these experiences shaped my perspective on crafting user experiences, it was my time at Red Bay Coffee and Bluestone Lane that solidified my foundations in specialty coffee.
An Australian-inspired experience rooted in Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) practices, Bluestone Lane had just begun to establish itself in the San Francisco Bay Area [in 2017]. Prior to my hiring, 227 Front Street had only been open for a few months; but Bluestone's expansion was rapid. By the time I'd left, in 2019, I'd aided in the launch, education, and management for three new locations in San Francisco. For reference, I went from never pulling a shot of spro' to being a coffee educator, store manager, and new store opener in under two years.
(was i being underpaid? absolutely.)
Underpaid, but dedicated—and if it weren't for those around me, encouraging me to remain steadfast, I wouldn't have progressed so quickly. I'd adopted a choreographic workflow thanks to the efforts of Jak Michael-Ryan (Current Global Barista Lead at Proud Mary Coffee ), who also instilled within me, a chemistry-level understanding of coffee extraction through repeated trainings. These trainings were SPRO 101, and part of the on-boarding process for baristas. Nevertheless, each time Jak held a training, I attended. By the second training, I had the material locked in. By the third, I was assisting in the workshops, often co-teaching them, filling in spots of knowledge for specific team members that had questions but didn't want to derail the rest of the curriculum. By the sixth, I was a certified educator for Bluestone Lane's San Francisco region who reported directly to Jak and Georgia Goldsbrough-Reardon , who was the Director of Education for Bluestone at the time.
Unfortunately, no workplace is perfect—and Bluestone had its challenges; but it left an indelible mark on my understanding of coffee and cafe culture. It was also the place where I realized my knowledge needed to evolve in order to create the experiences I wished to
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Coffee: Experience or Flavor?
People are used to coffee being bitter—or tasting burnt. The darker the roast, the 'stronger' or 'better' the coffee; or at least that's the association we often have with the bean. For many of us, that's our olfactory memory because that's what we grew up with—a bitter, utilitarian beverage that served its purpose to get us out of bed in the morning.
It wasn't until the addition of sugar and sugar that coffee became more palatable to the American audience.
This led to the universal rule of coffee consumption: People will drink coffee, even if it doesn't taste great, as long as the consumption of the beverage meets one or more of the following criteria:
The Utilitarian Narrative
Coffee in the United States is still a utilitarian, capitalist tool that's used to get us out of bed in the morning. This is far different from its origins in Ethiopia and Yemen, where it holds a place a place as a cultural beverage with social-ties. Ironically, in Scandinavian countries, coffee lends itself to being more of a social-beverage, to the point where the Swedes called 'Fika', which they consume coffee in social gatherings.
[In a later article, I’ll breakdown the concept of third-wave in relation to coffee consumption, and how Scandinavians ran laps around the World Barista Championship for about six years straight.]
This is the complete opposite of the American habit of grabbing a quick cup of coffee to go—a perspective I want to change. I aim to return coffee to it’s social, ritualistic roots. Through interactive and immersive design, I hope to meet people where they are in their education to better define their olfactory memory, and redefine how we approach coffee.
Years later, these insights inspired the creation of Event Horizon, a concept rooted in the nostalgic charm of the early internet—a time when online interactions were slower, more intimate, and less entangled with everyday life. With Event Horizon, I aimed to revive that lost sense of intimacy and mystery in our metamodern world, with food & beverage at the forefront.
Event Horizon, an Experiment: The meme_χ Prequel
Event Horizon was a curated beverage experience that I said ‘existed in the space between senses’. Using my mixology experience, I crafted beverages that reflected and enhanced the atmosphere of events. From art shows, to fundraisers, corporate events and private house parties; Event Horizon acted like a symbiote from the Marvel Universe—it seamlessly integrated into its host, elevating the overall experience.
The concept, which later evolved into ‘SpaceBar,’ began to take shape during the latter rounds of the Glitter Cat’s [RIP] 2022 Digi2tion, an online barista competition that challenged participants to push their creative boundaries. At its inception, Event Horizon emerged as a bizarre, imperfect Alternate Reality Game (ARG), straddling the line between fiction and reality. At the time [to me] it was more than just a brand; it was the conceptualization of a character—an extension of my public persona and a manifestation of my deep love for hard sci-fi, roleplaying, and immersive storytelling.
To breathe life into Event Horizon, I created an Instagram account populated with some followers and staged interactions in an attempt to give it a ‘lived-in’ feel. I even set up a functioning fake email and phone number, making it seem like an organization that existed just beneath the surface of everyday life. I wanted Event Horizon to be surreal; blurring the lines between brand and personified-entity that people could interact with.
As the concept developed, I collaborated with coffee professionals and brand designers to shape Event Horizon's aesthetic and identity. We wrestled with questions like: What should Event Horizon look like? Should it lean into Afro-futurism? How should the drinks it developed reflect the events it inhabited? What aromas, textures, and flavors would best represent the 'default' state of Event Horizon? Each question peeled back a layer of what Event Horizon could be, pushing me to idealize how the online experience would translate into the physical.
A Response to a World, [Disconnected].
In addition to a side-hustle, a labor of love, and weird self-expression, Event Horizon represented my answer to a world that felt increasingly disconnected. Growing up in the early 2000s, the internet offered a unique form of intimacy in the way we connected. At the time [rose-tinted goggles, please don’t fail me] secrets were still exchanged on playgrounds, and cheat codes like the Konami Code, Motherlode, and Blood Code were scribbled in notebooks, hidden between the pages of school textbooks, or shared through Game Informer [RIP^2] and Nintendo Power [RIP^3]. The internet, still in its teenage-groot years, offered pockets of community and joy in the most unexpected of places. Those moments of surprise and discovery of something special and personal (even if just for that moment) are feelings that seem lost in our hyper-connected, overly curated world.
How many times have you seen that same meme? -Palim
I wanted to design an experience that would pull people back into a world where intimacy wasn’t entirely lost. I wanted to encourage people to step away from their screens and get reconnected with the tangible, immediate reality around them. In regards to companies, I wanted to reject sterile engagement tactics; instead choosing to curate moments/memories that felt both nostalgic and entirely new all-the-same.
The Birth of Memeχ: Learning from Event Horizon
Event Horizon was, in essence, a proof of concept for what would later become memeχ, a framework for understanding media and storytelling through the lens of past, present, and future cultural shifts. Inspired by Vannevar Bush’s concept of the memex—a device designed to mirror the human mind's associative processes—memeχ examines how our interactions with media oscillate between different modes of consumption and understanding.
Much like Event Horizon, memeχ draws on nostalgia and the reinterpretation of past experiences to inform our present and future interactions. It rejects one-size-fits-all narratives/strategies in favor of creating personalized, sensory-driven narratives that often play off of our olfactory memory. In truth, Event Horizon was a complete and utter failure. I received all-but-two text messages, but it was atop this failure that I established the foundations of a new philosophy, one that would challenge the ways I connect with audiences; and would open the door to a new perspective of immersive storytelling.
And before you ask—Yes, I’m working on a new ARG.