I agree with you and calumin. Around 1980 I went to live for a time in the Boston area, and was surprised to find that largely, in that metropolitan area, espresso drinks were considered an exotic "ethnic" specialty, relegated to the old Italian quarter in Boston's North End. Coffee per se was available around the various college neighborhoods, but nothing like the espresso-coffeehouse culture I had experienced in Berkeley the previous 20 years.
I'm told that the Boston-area situation began changing rapidly a few years later. But the point is, it was not the tradition there that it had been in Berkeley.
Calumin's last pph above expresses the same perception that led me to first join this thread.
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