For some reason I find myself embarrassed to say this, but this is probably my favorite coffee shop in the area. The baristas are well tenured (get it...college joke!) and make a good espresso. My only coffee-related complaint is that they use powdered chocolate instead of syrup for my mochas, but the espresso blend is tasty. And any slight of mocha is forgiven by beer. Beer! Delicious beer! On tap! With happy hour specials! The baked goods are acceptable, in a sort of bland-vegan-organic-y sort of way. But it's the ideal place to work. The atmosphere is perfect—right amount of lighting, actual good art on the walls, and the barista's taste in music is impeccable. The music's loud, but I don't mind—it's one of the few places I can go for three hours, not recognize most of the music, but like it all. Yes, it is fairly hipster, but nowhere as bad as Bauhaus or Vita (Solstice hipsters seem to be grad students, so they're a bit mellower and way too concerned with finishing grading to judge my rugby t-shirt). And as mentioned by others, great people watching. Seriously, try it out. It kind of makes me wished I'd gone to UW.