The Stanmeyer Gallery and Coffee House in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

KALCHEIM: Why I love the Stanmeyer Gallery and Shaker Dam Coffee House

What John Dryden, and Samuel Johnson, those famous denizens of the old London Coffeehouse, surely understood, was that man must exist socially just as much when he is engaged in serious consideration of the affairs of the day, as when he chooses to be frivolous; and all of this can happen quite naturally over coffee.

It is quite something for West Stockbridge, the once lower-class twin of Norman Rockwell Stockbridge, to boast that it has not one, but two coffee shops that also double as art galleries. We also have a superb bakery and caterer which has just moved from Richmond, called SoMa, and will soon have a Russian-financed sculpture park behind the post office. Seemingly in recognition of all this new-found state of affairs, the state has recently sponsored a project to repave the sidewalk on Main Street with brick.

The Stanmeyer Gallery and Coffee House on Main Street in West Stockbridge, mass.
The Stanmeyer Gallery and Coffee House on Main Street in West Stockbridge, mass.

But there is one of these new locales that is particularly close to my heart, and that is the Stanmeyer Gallery/ Shaker Dam Coffee House, the little yellow house on the far corner of Main Street as you turn west on Route 102/41 heading towards New York State or Richmond. It is the only coffee shop I have ever frequented worthy of being called a “Coffee House” in the old-fashioned sense of being homey center of good conversation and ideas, all springing up naturally from the stimulative drink being served. The coffee is, as it happens, superb. I had never really drank much coffee when I discovered this place, but have since become something of a coffee addict, due merely to the pleasure which draws me so regularly to Stanmeyer establishment.

John Stanmeyer, the owner, is a widely-respected photographer who works for National Geographic magazine, and won last year’s prestigious World Press Photo of the Year award for a photograph he took in Djibouti in Eastern Africa. He uses the space mainly as a gallery to showcase his fine photography, much of it published in the magazine. I must say that I am not a connoisseur of photography, but people who are tell me that Mr. Stanmeyer’s work is very special indeed. The opportunity to meet John, who can often be found, holding court somewhere about the place, when he isn’t off on some project for National Geographic, is alone worth a visit. So, too, is the chance to chat, or perhaps more than chat (I have had discussions there that have lasted two hours or more) with one of the seemingly endless train of eccentric people who give the place so much of its character. Past and present baristi at Stanmeyer’s have included a Professor of Botany who gave up on academia to start a landscaping business; a Marxist intellectual who is at present on a motorcycle tour of the country; and a onetime Berlin coffee roaster who trades options on the side. You get the idea.

John Stanmeyer in his gallery. Photo: Ben Garver. Courtesy of Berkshire Eagle
John Stanmeyer in his gallery. Photo: Ben Garver. Courtesy of Berkshire Eagle

I suppose part of why I love this place is that it is so very much needed in a modern world where we sprint from one task to another, and do not often stop to think, talk, and reflect while drinking coffee. Look at the lines of young professionals at Starbucks, all impatient to get their lattes to go. Seemingly the only people who stay are depressed looking millennials, permanently plugged into their computers with earphones, and almost entirely sealed from the humanity around them. What John Dryden, and Samuel Johnson, those famous denizens of the old London Coffeehouse, surely understood, was that man must exist socially just as much when he is engaged in serious consideration of the affairs of the day, as when he chooses to be frivolous; and all of this can happen quite naturally over coffee.

John Stanmeyer is a man of an unusually strong social conscience, and worldly idealism, who has often said that he sees his little gallery as one small part in changing the world for the better. You might be tempted to laugh at such a vision, but if you go back again and again to the Stanmeyer gallery and coffee shop, I warrant you will see something in it.