CHEW promotes a safe spring break >>See page 2
Opinion: “It’s a theme that is directly aggressive.” >>See page 6
Spring practice opens with Jones’ press conference>>See page 12
Andrew Mrozkowski serves customers outside of Mast General Store on Gay Street. • All photos courtesy of Abigail Williamson
Knoxville resident hitches coffee shop to his cycle Michael Lipps Asst. Arts & Culture Editor For Knoxville resident Andrew Mrozkowski, his life is “kind of like a whirlwind” these days. “I’m running around doing coffee and my regular job and trying to take care of my home life,” Mrozkowski explained. By “doing coffee”, he means crafting and selling coffee beverages from the mobile cart he pulls behind him on a bicycle. “My coffee shop is about as big as the back seat of your car,” Mrozkowski said. “It’s three feet long and two feet wide and two feet high.” It’s called Pedal Java, and from Mrozkowski’s cart you can find the same coffee drinks you’d expect to find at brickand-mortar shops around town. Mrozkowski, an Asheville, North Carolina, native, has a history with coffee that is rooted in his lineage. He recalled a story his mother told him on when Mrozkowski’s grandmother asked her to clear the table, she would sip any remaining coffee left in the mugs on her way to the sink. “She wanted more than anything to
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feel like an adult, I think, but also to try something that her parents loved so much and would enjoy after every meal,” Mrozkowski said. His mother started letting him take sips of her coffee around the age of seven or eight. “I grew up witnessing coffee being not just a drink, but more of a means of gathering together and communicating and sharing, over coffee, details about your life,” Mrozkowski said. Aside from his earlier-than-most introduction to coffee and his ongoing obsession with it, Mrozkowski is admittedly an untrained barista. He obtained a B.A. in Music from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro before beginning his career of almost 25 years now as a programmer. “I worked in the computer lab (during school) and got out during the tech boom,” Mrozkowski said. “Naturally, there were a lot more opportunities to work and make good money as a programmer than there were as a musician.” And while it may seem an unlikely path to become a programmer before becoming a coffee peddler, such was the case for Mrozkowski. See PEDAL BREW on Page 4
Tuesday, March 8, 2016