I would be beside myself if Grinders closed. It's about time I wrote a review, since I'm a regular. I can be found sitting on one of the giant chairs surfing on the wi-fi many mornings.

I'm the one who brought the plants in. I used to water them a couple times a week but nowadays I'm lazy and they really need to be repotted. I should get on that ...

The music is always playing and everyone knows my regular drink ... they've continued to memorize it for me even as I started to slowly decrease the fat & calories of my regular order. Now it's an ice skim latte with sugar free vanilla. I used to get an Everything bagel with egg, cheese and potatoes most mornings. Now I get it on multigrain toast. Eh, it's the little things.

The coffee at Grinders is really really good. It's not bitter and sharp, it's smooth. They grind their beans outside many mornings per week. Sometimes it gets too warm inside during the winter so we prop the doors open, but if the grinder is going outside, it'll blow coffee bean fumes in the door.

There's some retired motorcycle cops who meet up every morning and sit around the big round table. They often park their motorcycles in front of the place together. They call themselves the Geezerados.

There's sometimes a few right-wingers having conversations mid-day. One time I listened to their meeting and heard them trying to come up with controversial topics to get people to come to church. They spent a long time trying to figure out who could get them proof that global warming isn't happening, so they could use that as their hook.

A lot of moms come in with their kids. Seeing siblings piled up in one of the oversized chairs together is common. There are a few regulars who come in specifically to sit on the internet all day. I'm not there all day, but I'm there at all times of the day because I have a home office, and you never know when you suddenly need caffeine.

Early in the morning and after 3pm the place becomes flooded with Sunnyslope High School kids. They range from ROTC kids wearing pickle suits to trendy girls in neon to the alternative crowd. They often lay around the couch splayed across each other or gazing into each others' eyes. 

Ordinarily I'm a real talker and I can't usually keep my mouth shut, but Grinders is the one place that I go where I barely make a peep. I just eavesdrop on everyone's conversations and sometimes run into friends I know. I usually go before my brain is fully awake in the morning, that's part of it. For the record, a couple months ago one of the girls there said I was practically invisible and she hardly knew I was there, because I was so quiet.

There's nothing pretentious about Grinders at all, and it's also down to earth without being ghetto. It has character. Some months the art is better than other months. Hannah has been there for years (they call her Big Hannah now, only because there's another girl named Hannah who is tiny and they call her Little Hannah) and Hannah rocks and makes the best breakfast ever. 

I can ride my bike in the morning and be wearing my pajamas and not have anyone really bat an eye. That's the beauty of Grinders. I've seen other people come in wearing their pajamas, too. It's a little bit like the cafeteria in a college dorm, except the people are of all ages and we live down the street from each other instead of down the hall from each other.

Grinders has a location inside the John C. Lincoln hospital across the street, too. It's common to see the hospital workers walk in wearing their scrubs. I think they're also opening one at Devry, or they just did. I was frustrated to hear that they tried to open a location at the Art Institute but they were one week too late, Stupid Starbucks had just gotten there. LAME!