When Stephanie and I lived in West Seattle, we would have a date night every Tuesday at Tully's Coffee by Thriftway (at the intersection of California Street and Fauntleroy). Last night, we decided it was time to bring back the tradition (at a local coffee shop). We drove through Old Town, which is in the middle of a massive road construction project, only to find that there wasn't a single locally-owned coffee shop open during the evening. We then drove to the strip mall by Shari's, but of course the little coffee shop there was also closed. We eventually decided that we would head across Highway 99 to the Starbucks by Safeway. The coffee was tasty and the conversation was stimulating, but the surroundings were certainly lacking. I hope that once the construction project is finished in Old Town we'll be able to frequent one of the locally-owned coffee shops that have considerably more personality than the common strip-mall Starbucks.