For those in the area, I found this article quite interesting,
whenever you are on the road and need to suffer a commercial cuppa.http://ineedcoffee.com/07/washington-dc/Frankly, I would rate Murky higher than they did.  Glad to see Misha's
is not on the list.

Steve,
Thanks for sending that.  I'm in DC every other week, and make it around to some of the shops.  I've had some bad shots from Murky, but also quite a few good ones.  As with many places, much depends on the barista.
I've been staying at the M Street hotel (at New Hampshire) lately, and there is an Illy Caffe right off the lobby.  Maybe not up to the standards of some of the others, but pretty much the same as I would expect in Italy (which is pretty good).  Plus it's convenient.
Another place that surprised me is called Java Green on 19th NW (K&L).  I've gotten some very good shots there.
There were a couple of others on the list there that I haven't been to, yet, that I'll have to try.
I'm a little concerned about the article's implication of not being able to find decent coffee in DC.  I actually find that there are quite a few shops of interest there.  Compared to my now-hometown of Boston, where there exists only a bleak landscape of *$ and DD, DC looks great.   I guess it depends on your basis of comparison, though -- not everywhere can be the Pacific NW.
-AdkMike
 ---------

It's a pretty stupid article, actually.  I found it poorly written 
and hard to follow, with no information on location of various 
shops.  The contrived rating scheme produced rather skewed results IMO.
I'm a fan of Murky's, I live in the DC area, and I authorized this email.
-Greg
At 08:19 PM 11/25/2007, you wrote:
<Snip>

That was basically my take on it. The article was written for entertainment,
not for actually finding good coffee. It was trying to amusingly tie
together D.C politics with coffeeshops. In the end, however, trying to get
useful information out of the article was harder than getting some out of a
politician.
On Nov 26, 2007 7:54 AM, Greg Scace  wrote:
<Snip>

I actually agree that the writing wasn't very substantive.  Still, for
me, it was useful because it highlighted some shops to which I'd never
been.  The only coffee shops I really knew of here other than really
bad ones (e.g., Starbucks) were Tryst and Murky.  And I'm not
"hipster" enough to even walk into Tryst.
On Nov 26, 11:32 am, "Erik Snapper"  wrote:
<Snip>