SideBar Coffee
Leesburg, Virginia
December 15, 2024
My best friend and I traversed the brick sidewalk of downtown Leesburg on the hunt for coffee. By this point in the morning, we had already been to a bookstore, a home/furniture store (where we sat on the second floor couches pretending that it was our apartment, naturally), a bakery that we thought was a walk-in vibe but it was certainly not, and a soap store where we were very close to being sold Marvis – the whitening toothpaste that is apparently extremely popular because of TikTok. Excellent salespeople, they were. But that’s not the point. The point is: we wanted coffee.
I lived in Virginia for ten years, so I used to frequent these streets quite often. My family visits every year for a Christmas concert called “Jingle Jam,” which has been occurring for fourteen years now. We have been to ten of them, and my older brother has been a part of it – playing guitar – for a few years now, and my little brother now plays bass with him in the opening set. My parents, friends, and I are very intense supporters of this concert. Shouting, dancing, and reciting the full countdown in Go Where I Send Thee (One for the Little Bitty Baby) – there is no embarrassment at the Jingle Jam show.
This was the morning after the concert and a few days before Christmas, so the street lamps were decorated with red bows and wreaths and some storefronts had holiday drawings in white on the glass. Every year that I go back to downtown Leesburg I discover that some things have changed. The coffee shop that I once loved is now under new management and doesn’t really serve coffee anymore. There are new bookstores, which is a plus. New restaurants and bars. It’s strange, though, because I feel like the feeling of being there is always the same, despite all the changes throughout the years. It’s odd to think that I don’t live there anymore – or that I ever did.
We had known that SideBar, a local restaurant, had a coffee window, but we were surprised – and grateful, given it just started to snow – that there was a small indoor section of the cafe with a few high-top tables. There were decorations for the holidays and fun specials, like Gingerbread and Peppermint. I went with a Brown Sugar Latte. The barista was someone that we had gone to high school with which was a happy surprise. I promise that this fact will not impact my honest review of the coffee. You guys know by this point, though, that I am really not very critical when it comes to coffee quality. I still don’t think my palate is extraordinarily refined. That being said, my latte was delicious.
I remember thinking, at that moment, how lovely it is to have cute cafes like that in life that you can just stop by and have space to just be. It can even, as in this case, be a refuge from the weather. Cafes are just so special -- especially when you are in good company. I hope, no matter how much things change in Leesburg, that there will always be a cafe for my best friend and I to stop into and chat about all that has changed in life, and all of our hopes of what is to come.
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