Ever since living in Dorchester a few years ago, I've had this pipe dream of opening a little coffee shop there. I don't think there's a single Starbucks in Boston's biggest neighborhood.  According to the Starbucks-finder at starbucks.com there's maybe supposed to be one here...


...but I think they may be mistaken. 

Dot being Dot, there are quite a few Dunkins, but what's missing is a dark, broody, little hole-in-the-wall coffee house or two.  I'm thinking someplace with a quirky name (I've got a few I'm mulling over: "SEX, SEX, SEX" is one), some overstuffed sofas, and a little spot way back in the back for the odd performance — Tibetan Monks or Appalachian jug bands, or something on xylophone or theremin, maybe.

I go through long periods where I don't think about it, and then suddenly the idea will pop up again. On a recent visit to the old 'hood I noted some small upgrades on Dot Ave., around the corner from where I used to live.  Enough of my friends have emigrated there, fleeing high rents elsewhere in the city, and I know they all drink coffee. And complaining that there's nowhere low-key in this town to hang out is the local sport of choice.  Wouldn't it be great to have another spot to gripe about?

Actually, what I like about Dot is, attempts to prissify it notwithstanding, it's still fairly gritty and mean.  Mean in a nice way, I mean.  Not mean-girl mean, like the South End or Davis Square.  But kinda rough and tumble.  Gruff, but with heart, you know?  The kind of place I'd want to hang out wouldn't be full of pretentious twits glaring at everybody and silently judging one another by whose jeans are skinnier.  Neither would it be peopled by the crack-addled dregs in need of adult diapers that sometimes invade places that sanction loitering.  Isn't there something in between?  I keep hoping against hope.

Anyway, I got into one of my opening-a-coffee-house moods this morning, and Googled "how to open a coffee house".  That's my first impulse with anything.  Google it.  And my search revealed, as googling so often does, precisely what's wrong with the world these days. 

First of all, the small-business class has been decimated.  People complain about it, but then people complain about everything.  Our impossible demands coupled with our unwillingness to do anything to have them met, is the reason we're in the mess we're in, in case you didn't know. 

There are just supposed to be coffee houses, and restaurants, and cool places for us to hang out and shop.  Someone — not us; someone with nothing more important to do — is supposed to provide these things for us. When big boxes and franchises do just that we whine that it's not the right somebody.  We want our coffee served up by wacky sitcom types in cafes packed with local color!  Real people who don't realize we're snickering at their quirky dress, funny accents, and quaint, unselfconscious conversation.  Come on!  Entertain us! Dance, monkey, dance!

We want Main Street to be there for us, in other words, but we're not really there for Main Street.  I mean, I get the feeling it's  needlessly difficult to open a business these days.  Not only is it prohibitively expensive to start out, but there are a lot of middlemen who don't do much to help but want to cash in other people's dreams. 

You can't just rent a little storefront, set up an espresso machine and five or six tables, get your friend the accordionist to play for a couple hours a night in the back, and have at it.  It's not even enough to get "barista training".  Nowadays, if you believe the "consultants", you have to send your baristas to college to learn to pour "latte art". 

Talk about prissification. 

Now, I know everybody fantasizes about opening a coffee house.  Like this joker, who actually did, and then wrote a book about how it was the worst thing he ever did, and made a bunch of money.  But his problem was he was a coffee snob (and just a snob in general, by the sounds of it).  You want a model that works in Dot, don't look to Vienna, look to Quincy.  Dunkin Donuts is not for connoisseurs, it's for addicts.

That's probably why Starbucks has never ventured into Dorchester.  People there don't have whatever personality disorder people with a need to order overcomplicated caffeinated drinks do.  I myself have no verbal skills before my second cup of coffee.  I can't even imagine trying to order anything more complicated than "a cup of coffee," before I've had a cup of coffee.

I didn't grow up in the food-allergy age.  You ate and drank what they put in front of you.  If you died, you died.  Back in the day, that which didn't kill you made you stronger.

And that sums up Dot pretty good, too, actually.  I mean, it's Dot.  It's not like you need high-concept and cutting edge design.  You don't need your caffeine in bone china on a silver tray with a complimentary lady finger. Just a good old-fashioned cup of jet fuel and a kick in the pants on your way out the door. 

So, we got a business model, or what?