Asheville

Sarah: I think it was the first time I had a pour-over. I was like “you weight that?” Wow. This is incredible. I didn’t even know coffee could taste like this.

James: This is Sarah. Sarah’s talking about the first time she went to one of the highest quality specialty coffee shops in all of North Carolina. A coffee shop called Waking Life.

Waking life would eventually be featured in the New York Times and in countries as far away as New Zealand. But it wasn’t because the coffee was great.

Rather, it’s because Waking Life would, eventually, hurt many women in the Asheville community.

Here’s a quick primer on what kind of place that Asheville is. It’s a liberal city of about 100,000 people, nestled into the Appalachian mountain range.

If you wonder down the high street you’ll find stores selling a hundred different windchimes…

[Wind chimes]

and there’s a fortune telling machine…

Fortune telling machine: What are you waiting for? Come on over and Zoltar will give you words of wisdom.

James: And there’s even a piano in the airport.

[Piano music introduction]

I’m James Harper and this is Filter Stories, the untold stories hidden in your cup of coffee.

Okay, let’s get into the story.

The year is 2012, and Sarah is a university student in Asheville.

Sarah: …and started going into Waking Life to study. And I remember talking with the only owner at the time…

James: A guy called Jared.

Sarah: …about how I was wanting to get more into the coffee side of things, because that was really my passion.

At one he said “well, why don ‘t you send me your resume?” So I did. And then I remember getting a call back, months later, and I was like “yes! I got the Waking Life job!” And I was very excited about it.

James: Because what did it mean for you?

Sarah: It meant that I could figure out a way into specialty coffee.

James: Sarah now begins to work part-time for Jared at Waking Life.

James: Do you remember your first day?

Sarah: Yes. Yes, I do. Actually, I remember I was working with Jared on my first day. I remember just being very wow-ed. Because my previous coffee knowledge was you press a button and the coffee comes out.

James: What were your first impressions of Jared?

Sarah: I mean he seemed very in love with coffee and very excited about coffee and passionate about it. And I think that’s what made me really excited to see an owner that was working behind a bar, that was really excited about what they were serving.

James: Sarah starts working at Waking Life at an interesting juncture in Jared’s life.

Sarah: When I first came on I remember Jared being very clearly like someone who had just come out of Christianity. Like a lot of Christianity, and being like “I’m not super religious anymore, and I’m finding my own self outside of religion and the South” and him like often trying to have intellectual conversations.

James: Let’s fast forward a bit to July 2014. Jared starts a blog called Holistic Game. Here are a few sentences from his first blog post:

“Greetings. You are perhaps reading this because you have stumbled about the “manosphere” looking for answers to your personal and romantic woes. Abit about me. I’m a young man in the twilight of his third decade on this planet. I lost my virginity at age 24 and until the past year struggled mightily when interacting with women.”

Around this time, Sarah begins to notice that something has changed with her boss Jared.

Sarah: We used to have some in passing intellectual conversations when I first started working there. And then, as time progressed, there was more of a distance between me and him. And not only me and him but I think like everyone that worked there and him.

James: And do you remember Jacob in the cafe?

Sarah: So Jacob came along maybe a year and a half into me working there. And then I remember maybe weeks or months later found out that he was going to be a business partner in Waking Life.

James: Sarah now has two bosses, Jared and Jacob.

Sarah: and then once Jacob came on it was a very clear change where they were, like, almost “us against the world” sometimes.

James: Jared and Jacob, now business partners, also become partners on Jared’s Holistic Game blog. They have stumbled into the Red Pill community.

This is a community of men who call themselves pickup artists and they invest time learning how to be more effective convincing women to have sex with them.

And red pill pickup artists are a special breed of pickup artist. They believe Western women will more readily offer sex to “alpha,” dominant men when they are younger. And then if and when the time comes to start a family, women will choose more submissive and loyal “beta” men.

So in a nutshell, the owners are Waking Life, Jared and Jacob try to develop strategies to appear more like dominant, alpha men, in the hope of having sex with more women.

I did get hold of Jared for this story, but he politely declined my interview request. And I wasn’t able to get in touch with Jacob.

[Holistic Game intro music]

Jacob: I’ve never never looked at porn in my life.

Jared: Yeah, me neither.

Welcome to the Holistic game podcast. Number three.

Jacob: Numero tres.

Jared: Numero tres. Before we start…..

[Wind chimes]

James: Jared and Jacob also begin a podcast where they talk about red pill strategies for an online community of pickup artists. They anonymize themselves by referring to one another as “Big J” and “Little J.”

[Holistic Game intro music]

Jacob: I was getting what [beep] call the next day.

Jared: Jay! Get my name right! We’re trying to keep it anonymous.

Jacob: Trying to, trying to….

[Wind chimes]

James: Nobody in Asheville knows that the Holistic Game podcast is out on the internet. Unless of course, they are part of the pickup artist community.

And even if you knew the podcast existed, you wouldn’t know the identities of Jay and Jay, or even where in America the podcast it’s being recorded.

[Holistic Game intro music]

Jared: There was a little bit of profit from it. She was a plate, it was a person have sex with once a week. So like say in the beginning you were putting in two units, drop down to putting in half a unit, you know? Like, just call her once a week, have her over. Like, tell her to come over at 9:00. You know, get her to come over, f — her, and then be like, “hey, it’s good to see” or whatever. Cut it off short, you know?

[Wind chimes]

James: And all the while Sarah is working at Waking Life. She, like everybody else in the community, does not know that Jared and Jacob, her bosses, are the men behind the podcast.

Sarah: When I look back on it, especially my first like year, what made me want to keep going there every single day was my customers. And, you know, a lot of the same people came every single day. They became your best friends, it felt like.

You know, this one time them just being, like “hey, how was your day going? You look a little off” or something. And being like, “that’s actually what I needed.”

[Holistic Game intro music]

Jared: And we talked about this in the first podcast. It was like every girl that came into our business, I was just like [groan]. All over it. You know what I mean? Yeah, these girls that just a nowadays, I’m like “that girl I would never touch”. Back then, I was like, “I just want to drag that girl in the bathroom.” You know what I mean?

[Wind chimes]

James: Sarah begins seeing more of a change with how her bosses, Jared and Jacob, are interacting with their customers.

Sarah: You started to see some boundaries crossed. Where you were like, “I don’t really like the way you just talked about the customer” or “I don’t really like the way that you went out and it almost seemed like you were bothering them”

But I remember it clearly being like “I think that person’s trying to get work done and you look like you might be annoying them.”

James: I’m imagining someone a laptop, typing away, and with a head cocked to the right, kind of listening?

Sarah: Yes. Totally and sometimes be like, “okay, I’m still typing. Okay, you’re still there. Okay, I’m still typing…”

[Holistic Game intro music]

Jacob: But if you can tell that a guy that’s making fun of you is insecure, it’s very easy to just turn the table and be like “how many times you having sex a week? How’s that going for you?”

Especially if you’re with a bunch of guys and they’re like “you’re just going to be alone forever, aren’t ya?” Like, it’s so easy to just become the champion in that room. Because you’re doing what everybody else wants to be doing, right? So just call it out.

Jared: Exactly. “How much you getting laid? Once a month? Cool, thumbs up.

Jacob: “I slept with five women last week. That was cool.”

Jared: “It was real cool.”

[Wind chimes]

James: When did you meet Lindsay?

Sarah: I met Lindsay because I would go back to Charlotte pretty regularly.

James: Lindsay is the owner of a pop-up cafe in Charlotte called The Daily Press.

Sarah: And so I went in and her menu was incredible. She had five signature beverages on. And she was doing coffee like I hadn’t seen anyone else do coffee in North Carolina. And it was especially seeing a woman do it.

It was super exciting because at the time pretty much everyone in coffee that I’ve been exposed to that was an owner, was a man.

James: And overtime, Sarah gets to know Lindsay better because she does more and more guests barista shifts at Lindsay’s cafe in Charlotte.

And speaking of Lindsay, here she is.

James: And when you when you opened the Daily Press, what’s the story there?

Lindsay: I wanted to have a little bit more equality in the shop. There’s a tendency for mustachio-ed, white males to have an advantage over women. And despite the fact that I had been working so many years and coffee and working very hard to go above and beyond, the bromance between owner and employee would overshadow my work.

I wanted to create a space step didn’t operate like that.

James: What was reputation that Waking Life had at the time?

Lindsay: I just remember them being well respected in the coffee world. It had won best coffee shop in North Carolina.

I just remember kind of thinking at the time “Shucks, I wish we had gotten that.”

James: I hear that the coffee was excellent at Lindsay’s cafe, but compared to Waking Life’s clean and minimalist decor, Lindsay’s cafe could not have been more different.

Lindsay: It was in a dark dirty pub. And you know, it was awful at the time. I would come in and our equipment would be broken because the music venue the night before and I’d have to come in and clean up vomit from the show and beer cans and…

It was a passion project. And if I weren’t so passionate about coffee I would have died inside.

[Holistic Game intro music]

Jared: Part of it is like, man, women: step it up. Like, be better. Yeah, I mean be interesting. Like read something.

Jacob: Be passionate about something.

Jared: Yeah, like have an interest or a hobby or something that makes us men go “what? That’s really cool.”

[Wind chimes]

James: Also, in 2014, Sarah graduates from university.

James: So at that point, how did your hours change at Waking Life?

Sarah: When I graduated? I went rapidly from working two to three shifts a week to five shifts a week. I had planned on going to grad school and getting my PhD in sociology and I saw myself going the academic route.

But I fell in love with this community. I fell in love with Asheville and I couldn’t see myself anywhere else.

James: Sarah is now working full-time at Waking Life. A little while later, Waking Life is doing so well that Jared and Jacob begin to expand.

They find a downtown location and they now plan to have two shops.

[Holistic Game intro music]

Jared: Momentous decisions.

Jacob: Stressful decisions. I guess those usually go hand in hand.

Jared: Stressful business decisions. A hundred thousand bucks. And we’re talking of course about our latex suit, our dominatrix latex suit business. This is what we do.

Jacob: The new Factory is what we’re talking about with lots of hot rubber.

Jared: Huge cut outs for dongs. It’s pretty exciting.

Jacob: This is why we’re so good with women. We just give them a tour of the factory and all the toys, and there it is. Just ripe for the picking.

“That’s part of the tour, lady.”

Jared: Would you like to try this suit on for me baby girl?

Jacob: Put this on and bend over.

Jared: Oh mama.

Well, I haven’t got any new notches since last time. Have you? I don’t think you have either.

Jacob: No. No new notches…

[Wind chimes]

James: By now, the Holistic Game podcast has over 20 episodes. And the blog has made many references to people that Jared and Jacob have slept with.

Asheville is not a big city, about a hundred thousand people. If anyone ever finds out who they are and makes their identities public, it wouldn’t take much for the Asheville Community to figure out which specific women in the community Jared and Jacob were referencing.

And then, in August 2015, an anonymous blog comes out that de-anonymizes Holistic Game and attributes the podcast and the blogs directly to Jared and Jacob.

And for context, MeToo has not taken off yet. This is six months before Brock Turner and two years before Weinstein.

These revelations slowly start to circulate in the Asheville community. And at one point, Emily, who is the owner of a local news website, receives an email.

Emily: My husband and I like we buy and sell retro video games. And so we’re actually in the middle of selling stuff at the flea market and I got this email on my phone. So I was like, “I need to listen to this right now. I need to figure out and I need to go and find an interview of Jared speaking online to compare the voice to like confirm that this is what it seems to be.”

It was a multi-faceted social media branding campaign. And it was just so damning. And, you know, the media struggles to find documentation for stories like this. So just have it all laid out was just crazy, for lack of a better word.

James: What happened when you pressed publish?

Sarah: Oh God. Instant implosion. I mean, we’re sitting in a car talking about it three years later, you know?

You know, especially for like my little website. I was like, “hey, I’m getting 30,000 hits month. I’m killing it!”

And then I release the story and “oh my God, 10,000 hits an hour. Holy crap.”

I think I had got like a million hits that month.

James: This story is the equivalent of a wildfire.

On a Friday afternoon in September, Sarah is working one of her shifts at Waking Life and it’s then that she finds out what her bosses have been up to.

Sarah: I was at work and I looked at my phone and it just had text after text after text.

I was feeling really overwhelmed because I’d already been really busy at work and I was like, “I don’t know what I’m reading. I’m really confused. Like, is this a joke? Wait, what is this?”

And then you get deeper and deeper into it and you’re like, “oh, oh my gosh….”

James: Here’s Emily again, the local news blogger who broke the story.

Emily: There was a protest like that day. And it was women that had read it, they were like, “this is not okay.” And they just made up some signs and stood peacefully in front of the coffee shop and the coffee shop closed early that day.

It was very effective.

James: What was it about the story that resonated so strongly?

Sarah: They weren’t viewing women as human beings. They were calling them plates.

Saying “boys will be boys, this is just what men do” is giving leeway to any man that has acted in a predatory manner.

James: Sarah is now back at home and she’s listening to her bosses podcast and reading their blog.

Sarah: There’s just so many comments that… I mean they made me cry. I was just like “I don’t know how you could think this about a human, another human.”

I didn’t want any any woman that I know or any woman in general to be referred to as a plate or thought of as a plate.

And I remember making the decision that I couldn’t go back after reading what I read. There’s no way and so I let them know that I was going to go ahead and put in my notice and drafted an email and sent it in.

When I quit, I had no notice and I feel like with most jobs when you leave you have at least two weeks of saying “oh, it’s my last day. Let me say goodbye to you” and or whatever it is.

I worked my last shift not knowing it was my last shift and had absolutely no closure with any of my customers.

James: It wasn’t just that you were quitting a job. You were quitting a community that you had been such a part of.

Sarah: Yes. I mean, thankfully some of them are I had their numbers and can reach out to them. But my first thought were the older people that I made coffee for every day that I didn’t have their numbers and they become my favorite part of my morning, that I didn’t know how to contact them. Couldn’t find them on Facebook.

So you go through this whole list of people that you’re going to miss.

James: And then what happened after that?

Emily: There was another protest...

James: Here’s Emily again. You know, the local news bloggers who broke the story.

Emily: …more organized protest. Yeah, it was instantaneous pushback from the community about what was going on. But in a very like respectful manner, honestly, all things considered. It was very respectful and non-violent.

James: Jared and Jacob published many apologies. There’s a company apology and also personal apologies.

I asked Sarah what she thinks of her now ex-bosses apologies.

Sarah: Words…. I remember just being like “I don’t even think you could say any words right now that would make me feel any type of way about you. Except for, I’m still feeling angry and I think everyone’s still feeling angry.”

I don’t know. There was there was so many interviews that happened afterwards and the apologies and stuff where I just didn’t feel like they totally understood why what happened happened. And I think a lot of people felt that way.

James: The main Waking Life cafe that Sarah works at is sold at a fire sale to another cafe that had been looking to expand west. The second downtown cafe that they were in the middle of building falls through.

Waking Life had been operating for seven years. And in seven days it was clear they were out of business.

Sarah is now trying to figure out what to do next.

Sarah: I’m here at my house for days and days and days on my computer trying to figure out what my next up was. You know, the thought came to me and I had people reach out to me saying “hey, if you want support in whatever it is, if you want to open up a cafe, let us know and we’ll help you do it.”

And anytime you make a big decision, it’s really scary. This is earlier than I thought it was going to be but I’m I’m gonna do this.

James: Earlier? Why? How old were you?

Sarah: 23.

And I knew that I didn’t want to do it alone and Lindsay was the first person to reach out to me when everything happened saying “hey, if you quit you can come down here and work some shifts to make some money.” And I was like, “alright, I want to go to Charlotte and talk to Lindsay.”

And then I went down. I remember asking her if she would sit down and talk to me for a little bit. And I like nervously / was very over-caffeinated said “I’ve been wanting to do this bla bla bla. Do you want to do this with me?”

And I remember her being like…

Lindsay: Let’s do it.

I don’t even think we discussed it for more than a minute before we’re like “we’re opening a shop in Asheville”

Sarah: And she was so excited and it seemed like she was just ready to do it.

Lindsay: She wanted to create a safe space and to continue serving coffee to Asheville.

So then we were on the computer, just trying to figure out how we could make it a viable plan.

Sarah: Initially, we were trying to get the location that Waking Life was going to go into downtown.

James: Sarah and Lindsay set up a meeting with Jared and Jacob to see if they can take over the half-finished downtown space.

James: What was that meeting like?

Lindsay: Looking at Jacob, he just looked like he just wanted to collapse inside of himself. I think Jared was more “we’re here to discuss this. Let’s just discuss it.”

James: Sarah and Lindsay also set up a meeting with the estate agent.

Lindsay: He didn’t take us seriously at all. Didn’t want to show us the space. Was frustrated with us because we were four minutes early to look at the space.

Sarah: And the guy says “well, I just want you to know, that we have to have a professional business in here…”

Lindsay: “…We aren’t going to rent this space to people who are going to put ‘women’ or ‘female power’ in the windows!”

Sarah: and me and Lindsay looked at each other, just like “uh….that wasn’t our intention. We were just opening a coffee shop.”

Lindsay: We have credentials. If you want to see this functioning business that exists in Charlotte.

Sarah: And I remember Lindsay pulling out a copy of Barista Magazine that she had in her bag.

Lindsay: Y’know, we’ve been in Barista Magazine before. We’re not just random, naive individuals.

Sarah: It was quite shocking.

Lindsay: That was a traumatic experience for Sarah because it went from dealing with these misogynistic owners to seeing misogynistic landlords.

I know her spirit was a little bit crushed.

[Holistic Game intro music]

Sarah: I already felt like [queasy noises]. I want to make this space a better space in it was going to be. But that just completely killed it for me.

So I was actually driving at some point and saw a very small for-rent sign. And so I call in and make an appointment to go see it. And Lindsay’s back in Charlotte, so I go by myself. And walk in and the person showing us the space is actually one of my former customers.

“Oh, I’ve been making you coffee for a while, this feels good, you know, this feels right.”

It took us a week to get the keys to the space we’re in right now.

James: When did you open?

Sarah: We opened in 2016.

James: The new cafe is called Trade and Lore.

James: What was that first day like?

Sarah: It was really emotional because there was customers that I hadn’t seen in months. There was one particular couple, an older couple, that I loved very very much. And I was so worried I would never see them again just because I didn’t know how to get in contact with them. And maybe six months into being open, they walked through the door and I just started sobbing.

It was like “I didn’t think I was gonna ever see you again and it fills my heart so much to to have you in this new space.”

So that’s my story of it. Yeah, but I’m, you know, I’m happy to still be in Asheville and doing what I love in a community that I love.

[Wind chimes]

[Piano music credits]

Credits:

James: The awesome Filter Stories logo was created by Headquarters, a branding and packaging design team. Check out Headquarter’s other stuff on their website — www.headquarters.studio.

People in Asheville I want to thank for offering mep their time and trust: Sarah Winkler and Lindsay Pitman of Trade and Lore, Emily Trimnal of the Asheville Blog, Kristin and Ross Britain of Izzys coffee, Ella Minoppe, Cory Thompson, Toni Sherwood, Avery from Liberty Coffee House, Trey Crispin, Erin Derham and Jay Weatherly of High Five coffee and Gaea Gifts for letting record wind chimes for half an hour.

A big thanks to Ashley Rodriguez of Boss Barista podcast for helping me find the story. If you’re interested in deconstructing the patriarchy and hearing under-represented female voices in specialty coffee, you will love Boss Barista, her podcast.

A big thank you to the people who provided editorial feedback on drafts of the show: Lerato Maphanyane, Heather Simons, Christine Lariviere, Sina Ural, Amy O’Brien, Pia Klein and Jenna Kerndl.

I produced, edited and wrote and performance the piano music for Filter Stories.

Do you have story ideas for me? Email me at hello@filterstories.org. Follow Filter Stories on Instagram.com/filterstoriespodcast and visit Filterstories.org to sign up to the newsletter!

And that’s a wrap! Until next time.