Longhairs Professional Series: David James Kennedy
Guest Interview With The Longhaired Owner of James Coffee Co.
Leaders, politicians, professionals, royalty, even warriors have had long hair for centuries. Remember William Wallace, guys, with the spears and the English cavalry charging? Right.
Only in the past century has long hair on men become unprofessional. In today’s day and age, you can’t expect to apply for most professional-type jobs with long hair and be taken seriously.
How often do you see longhairs in the military, politics, law enforcement, TV broadcasting or financial securities? Have you ever seen a space shuttle pilot with long hair? An NBA referee? Doubtful.
Thus, to be a man with long hair is to have limited vocational options.
That’s why we’re introducing the Longhairs professional series. The purpose is to show successful men with long hair in their professional fields. Talking long hair and business.
We aim to reinforce the belief for every longhair:
Yes, I can be a longhair and be a professional, be taken seriously, make a good living. I don’t have to fall in line. I don’t have to be “conventional.”
Which brings us to our first installment. With limited vocational options, one is to build your own business, where people can’t tell you how long your hair can be.
We are super-stoked to interview David Kennedy, owner of James Coffee Co., located in the downtown San Diego neighborhood of Little Italy.
Since April 2014 DK and his posse have been serving up hot and cold coffee to Longhairs and other Little Italians. We came to learn David is the owner and, perhaps not-so coincidentally, also a man with long hair. He has some interesting thoughts and insights on long hair, and we wanted to hear more.
Here’s how it went down.
This was an awesome interview. We hope the best for David and James Coffee Co.
Stop for a visit if you’re in San Diego, if not you can still buy a bag of their coffee and cool swag on their website. At the very least check out this dope video about James Coffee Co. that explains, “why coffee?”
Read on for the abbreviated transcript:
Why coffee?
It seemed to really work well with things that were existing in my life: music and fabrication, furniture work, all those things you can find the connection with coffee. It’s the same sort of ideas you have your personal creativity, your development from finding something from nothing, raw materials or an idea in your head and you build it. And with coffee it’s the same idea, it’s very unique to the person who’s in control of it.
If you give the same coffee to two different roasters, it’s gonna be different. It’s just like writing a song, for some reason you take three chords, and two different guys play it, it just sounds different. I think that’s really cool.
With a cup of coffee, you can find that demographic with people that enjoy coffee. Within anyone, anyone out there it’s so cool, it brings so many people together, you can now have all these quick connections, on a much less involved platform.
Last year was all dedicated to special events and online stuff, we would show up at art shows, charity events, different things, just to share coffee with people, and then we’d be able to build a platform, then we could sell coffee and have a voice with online.
I knew each year I wanted a goal to be set, this year I needed a platform, this year we knew we needed an actual brick and mortar, or at least some footprint where people actually show up on a consistent basis, so if we did these events and if we talked about things online we could have people come and actually meet us, see us, see what we’re doing and actually make them a cup of coffee.
This was intimidating for me, because I’ve not been trained in any sort of business, so when people start talking about leases and employees it’s a little intimidating.
Initially our take was really easy, people said to me, why don’t you just put a coffee bar in here, take over this little area, and serve some coffee. I could get my head around that, I felt like I could be in control of that, it wasn’t too scary.
But then a couple months in I realized I didn’t like that working environment. I love collaborating with people and working with a group but I didn’t like the one that was built around me at the time. That ended up falling completely apart anyway, and we were left in this building by ourselves at the beginning of August, and we had the opportunity where we could pick up and leave, and be lost, or we could really try to commit to this space in Little Italy.
So, it wasn’t that Little Italy was a goal. I don’t know much about it, I lived in Poway, but I did see, it seemed really cool, being here for the past few months, you start seeing that it is special, it’s unique.
It’s really hard to get here [as a business]. Little Italy you can’t build up because of the airport. So it’s very limited access, which is just such a cool opportunity to be able to find a home base here, even though it’s still a destination part of the neighborhood. You have to get north, you have to know about it. Up here it’s more industrial, and I think that works for our brand too, so I definitely want to fight to figure out how to stay.
You said you committed, sounds like you made a decision out of it?
I don’t know how many years before that I would get a haircut once a year. It was kind of a special event, you know to let my hair grow, and then I’d get a nice haircut and I’d shave, feel special for the day. Then I realized that last time, I actually think it was October 2010, and I got my hair cut and felt special for a minute, then thought, aw fuck, I got short hair.
And I just realized, I don’t want to sound mean, but I guess I just felt like, guys have these really sharp haircuts, and really nice beards, and even all the guys with tattoos, all these different choices I really kind of do have this sort of anti, this social, or….what’s expected…
…I can’t be a banker and look like this.
At the end of the day even with tattoos and all that stuff, I can wear a long sleeve shirt and put on my costume when I go to work, when you have long hair you are…categorized. I guess, I didn’t want to be…it was one way for sure I couldn’t disguise or hide my long hair.
When you have long hair you’ve committed to, over anything else that you can do you’re saying something, you have abandoned, as being a man, you’ve abandoned the norm and the social stereotypes, you’re breaking those rules. Even if I was a banker with long hair I’d be breaking the rules, in the social atmosphere, and the expectations.
And it takes a long time. You can’t just decide to grow hair, there’s the awkward stage. I don’t know what exactly I’ve committed to, but it’s definitely a commitment, and I think that’s the other attractive thing to it.
It just seems different it’s like something that’s gnawing at you, or somebody just punches you in the face, what’s easier to deal with? Would you rather just get punched in the face, and be done with it? Or do you want someone just poking you, poking you, poking you, so it’s more on that side. Both versions are being committed, and they’re just different. And I think there’s something to be said for somebody who can take the poke, poke, poke over years.
Actually I think in so many ways it helps. I think in the world that I live in it makes me more approachable for a lot of the people I work with. The money people—loans, banks, insurance all that stuff—they’re like hey, it is what it is. They’re looking at numbers and money. And then when you communicate with people on a daily basis when it comes to contractors, coffee people, we’re involved, the business I’m in, it’s a subculture already, so it’s not a very closed off thing.
It’s big money [the coffee business], the industry itself, so there are a ton of “suit guys.” But it’s also the foundation of it that there is amongst the suit guys there is a subculture of really creative, young, interesting people that are doing things different and doing things for the first time. So ok cool, I don’t know either, so everyone has to work together to figure it out. But we all found this product, I think, because we didn’t just, want to go get a normal job, whatever a normal job is classified as. Work for Intuit, or something.
And, it’s going back to the idea that I did make a decision and a commitment to something, you know?
It just means that when you do that, it’s not just a fair weather thing at all. You grow your hair out it takes so long that it can’t just be a fair weather thing. At some point you’ve felt the downs, that if it was a fair weather thing you would’ve cut your hair. But since you worked through the [awkward stage], you’ve found the other side of it, therefore you get attached to it, just like you do in a relationship. You find that you have those ups and downs, the reason why you stick through it is you realize there are the ups and downs. I don’t know if it’s weird to relate it to hair, but that’s why it makes it hard to make the decision, “yeah I’ll just cut it off I don’t care.”
“There’s no such thing as a fair weather longhair.”
They realize if it’s part of you, and they like you, they tend to like the hair. I think that’s what it is. I’ve definitely, when we do social media stuff, I’ll get blasted sometimes, “cut your hair,” “it’s ridiculous,” or whatever, in pictures that somebody sees, but the people that are close, if there are potential people that would have an opinion, if they like you I think they like you then they like your hair. But I’ve heard the pressure.
Otherwise, not gotten myself into too many awkward scenarios with my long hair.
