Huntsville, here’s your next coffee obsession

With its razor wire perimeter and muted exterior, the property resembled a small prison. Still, the place exuded potential. There was ample parking. The building was located practically within football-pass-distance of bustling arts-center Lowe Mill and Trailhead bicycle shop. And the City of Huntsville had plans to build a bike lane and sidewalk, all down the street.

Victor Burlingame and friend Dustin Hoover would ride by once or twice a week on their gravel bikes - road bicycles with fat tires - as part of a route from Burlingame’s Five Points home to trails near the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

"And we kept passing this building," Burlingame recalls, "and I was like, 'This building is a diamond in the rough.'"

Now, after talking for two years about opening a bike-themed coffee-shop (or “cycle café”) here, purchasing the building and owning it for a little over a year; seven months of buildout; three months of surveys and approvals, this building at 2515 9th Ave. S.W. is now Gold Sprint Coffee. Burlingame and business partner Grant Mellen opened the venture in early August.

Gold Sprint oozes vibe for days. The redone, 2,200-square-foot space - which the previous owner used to store construction equipment - is outfitted with bicycles and bike tools, vintage furniture, lots of windows, animal skulls, patio and array of succulents. Vinyl records, ranging from Wavves indie to Mastodon heavy-metal, spin on a turntable behind the bar. A Nirvana song title, “Come As You Are,” is inscribed on the front door. The most striking aesthetic at Gold Sprint though is the rows of trophies behind the bar. Additional trophies are displayed in a nearby case. It started when Burlingame discovered a cache of 30 or karate trophies here, belonging to the building’s previous owner’s now-adult son, who agreed to part with the awards rather than bother with moving them. Soon, Burlingame’s friends were donating their own baseball, soccer and other mementos to the menagerie. “It started out as a bad joke,” he says, “and then people kept giving us trophies.”

Oh yeah, there’s damn good coffee at Gold Sprint too. (I can personally vouch for their nitro cold-brew, which is smooth and accelerative.) Laura Todd has been coming in regularly for dirty chai lattes, iced coffee, etc. She’s particularly fond of the chai, the flavor of which she describes as “very complex” and “really bold.” Todd, who owns a dog-walking/pet-sitting service, says, “What really strikes me about that place is it’s comfortable. Almost like you’re hanging out in one of your cool friends’ living rooms.”

But not in a hipster way. Gold Sprint is more genuine than that. Mellen, a machinist by trade, is largely a silent partner, and trusted Burlingame guide the venture’s vision. Asked to describe the café's look, Burlingame says, “I love mid-century stuff, I love industrial, I like repurposed institutional stuff. It’s the juxtaposition.”

With his gray-flecked Viking beard, copious tattoos and black T-shirt, Burlingame could pass for a guitarist in some 21st century metal band like Baroness. A Lee High School graduate, he’s worked in bike shops for around 20 years and ran retailer Bicycles Etc. for about 10 or so years. “Bikes and coffee have gone hand in hand forever,” he says. “A lot of bike guys are super into technical stuff and so coffee is appealing because now we’re in third-wave coffee (a term referring to an artisanal approach to coffee) and everything’s super technical. And hell, we had espresso machines at the bike shops and always drank coffee while we worked.”

A few years back, Burlingame had heard about a so called "bike and bean" shop in New England, that sold bicycles and coffee, which offset each product's naturally slow season. But in 2019, brick-and-mortar retail is a tricky species at best. And at worst - with online shopping enveloping industry after industry - an endangered species. So, while one end of Gold Sprint is outfitted with a work bench, air pump, tools, work stand, etc., they don't sell bikes. "This is better," Burlingame says. "We don’t have to carry half a million dollars in inventory to hang out with our bike friends. We're not a bike shop. We already have Trailhead, who we love."

The cycling community is definitely a thing, which has boosted Gold Sprint’s word-of-mouth. This being 2019, social media has also helped create early buzz, and within the first week customers were lining up outside in the morning waiting for the place to open.

For Burlingame, coffee is as nuanced as wine. He’s a big fan of African beans, particularly Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, known for their sweet, spicy and fragrant flavor profiles. But he warns, “the best bean in the world can be ruined by poor extraction.” Gold Sprint’s gear includes a La Marzocco Linea manual espresso machine. Other equipment behind the bar resembles chemistry lab gizmos. “We love the alchemy and the mechanics of doing all that,” he says.

Gold Sprint’s current hours of operation are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. With the later of those hours in mind, they carry a selection of craft-beer, including local breweries like Yellowhammer and Straight to Ale, as well as Avondale, Founders, Southern Prohibition, etc.. There are some food options too, mostly simple café fare including breakfast hash, sandwiches and paninis. The plan is to eventually develop a menu of breakfast burritos and tacos, but Burlingame says, “coffee and beer are the main focus.” Gold Sprint’s coffee prices range from about $3 for an espresso to $3.50 or so for an Americana or cortado and around $5 to $5.50 cold brew and nitro. Beers are mostly $4 to $7. Food items are about $3 to $8.

Burlingame got into cycling through his father, a Marine who commuted to work on a bike. Like many military families the Burlingames relocated often. They would ride their bikes together to explore their new neighborhoods. During the ’80s, young Victor raced BMX.

Decades later, Burlingame says, "Cycling still makes me happy. It’s my antidepressant. It’s childlike fun. Most of my best friends are from bikes, because you grind it out beside this dude for three hours and you talk about why work sucked today and have a bunch of “oh, s---' moments and explore and laugh about it later over coffee or beer.” These days, he owns around 20 bikes, ranging from track to road to tandem and all types in between. His go-to local places to ride include Monte Sano State Park mountain trails.

Through cycling, Burlingame met brothers Nathan and Michael Pocus of Birmingham. The Pocus bros had just launched their business Domestique Coffee and were taking their nitro cold-brew to cyclocross races. Burlingame calls Domestique “the best roaster in Birmingham.”

Domestique Coffee can be found in Whole Foods stores across Alabama, and some Piggly Wiggly grocers as well. But Gold Sprint is the first café in Huntsville to serve coffee made from their beans. These include single-origin coffees, meaning a Haitian bean is sourced from one farm in Haiti, a Bolivian is sourced from one farm in Bolivia, same for Guatemala and so on. The result is detailed intricate flavors. “When you’re talking about single-origin coffees,” Nathan Pocus says, “you’re really talking about the people behind the coffee. You’re tasting their effort, their labor, their culture. It really speaks to that place. When you start combining this global aspect to a local aspect, you really create something pretty neat for a community.” Domestique utilizes a fluid-bed roasting process. Pocus says the end result is “you’re not going to taste the roast process, you’re only going to taste the bean.”

Like Gold Sprint, Domestique is named for a cycling term. The latter refers to a rider who operates in a team-first support role rather than trying to win races, while the former refers to stationary-bike races typically held in bars.

During the ’90s, Burlingame spent a lot of time going to punk-rock shows. Punk’s DIY approach is all over Gold Sprint. Burlingame and pal Winston McElrea did a lot of the wood-working, including the handsome pine bar. Another friend, Adam Sheard, welded tables for the café. Buddies Dustin Hoover, Davis Yarborough and Scott Todd also pitched in. (At one point, it starts to feel like the proprietor is giving me notes for the “thank you” section of an album’s liner notes.) Burlingame would bounce ideas for Gold Sprint off wife Janet Burlingame, a media professional, writer and editor, often prefacing with, “Is this too weird?”

He sounds legitimately more psyched about neighborhood kids coming in to Gold Sprint to air up their bike tires than the overwhelming initial customer response. Burlingame says he looks to people like Oscar Gutierrez, the rascally Bandito Burrito restaurant owner known to give touring punk-bands meal discounts, for inspiration in terms of creating a local staple. For example, customers who ride bikes or walk to Gold Sprint receive a 10 percent (excluding nitro products). “I’m not going to be rich owning a coffeeshop,” Burlingame says, “but I can be a beloved member of the community, hopefully.”

Community is a word he uses a lot. But it’s not just talk. On Burlingame’s right shin, there’s a tattoo of a bear hugging an Alabama map, a heart symbol marking Huntsville’s location. In addition to prioritizing local and state coffee and beer companies, Gold Sprint uses tinctures and teas from mom-and-pop Remedy Herbs. “We wanted to make something unique to us,” Burlingame says. “A lot of people travel here for business or whatever, but no one is going to come to Huntsville and get excited because they went to the best Olive Garden.”

More: facebook.com/goldsprinthsv

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