CampaignFuel
Every great campaign runs on something. For this one, it's the coffee of the people — from Alturas to Crescent City, one unforgettable cup at a time.
A Show Your Work campaign means showing up — and showing up means being on the road, in the cold, in the fog, across the high desert and the redwood coast, with hundreds of miles between you and the next stop. The coffee shops of CA-2 are the beating heart of rural California. Greg visited them all. Here's what he found.
The Official Stops
Coffee Shops of CA-2
These aren't chains. These aren't focus-grouped. These are the places where real people start their mornings in the communities that Congress has forgotten.
📸 From the Stop
📸 From the Stop
📸 From the Stop
Eureka · Hum Yum Caramel Latte
Eureka · "Darn — closed!"
🎲 Also from Del Norte — Kobold's Lair, Crescent City
📸 From the Stop
Beyond the Bean
Bonus Campaign Fuel
Not every great stop on a campaign tour involves coffee. Sometimes the district serves up something unexpected — and equally unforgettable.
Peg's House
Peggy poured Greg an excellent locally made root beer and talked about Underdog, Sweet Polly Purebred, and how her parents made her wear 1920s clothing. One of those conversations that could only happen in Mendocino County — where magic is a real thing, and where a candidate learns more in thirty minutes of honest conversation than in hours of polling data. The root beer was outstanding. The stories were better.
📸 From the Stop
Excellent Mexican Food
After a long drive across the volcanic plateau, the discovery of excellent Mexican food in Alturas was one of the great surprises of the research tour. This is Modoc County — a community that contains multitudes, that has more to offer than its reputation for remoteness suggests, and that deserves a congressional representative who has actually eaten its food and walked its streets.
Hotel Niles Hamburgers
The hamburgers at Hotel Niles are exceptional — not exceptional for a remote high-desert town, but genuinely, memorably exceptional by any measure. The kind of burger that earns its place in a community's identity the same way the Hotel Niles itself has: quietly, without fanfare, simply by being excellent for a very long time. Order one.
Gold Rush Burger Restaurant
Yreka's Gold Rush Burger restaurant delivered on both counts: the food was delicious, and the interior is genuinely, wonderfully cool — a richly atmospheric tribute to the gold-rush era that makes you slow down and look around before you take a single bite. Small California towns can carry extraordinary character when they're given the chance. Gold Rush Burger is proof. The burger was outstanding. The room was better.
McDonalds — Crescent City
Troy at the Crescent City McDonald's delivered what Greg called the finest customer service he has ever received at any McDonald's in his life. This is not about the menu. This is about the people of Del Norte County — their warmth, their pride, their extraordinary local hospitality in a community that sees itself as overlooked. Troy represents the best of what CA-2 has to offer. He deserves a representative who recognizes it.
Coffee is How You Learn a District
You don't learn California's 2nd Congressional District from a campaign headquarters in San Francisco. You learn it across a diner table in Alturas, at a counter in Laytonville, from the person who pours your Hum Yum Caramel Latte in Eureka. You learn it from Susie, and Alexie, and Troy, and Peggy, and Crystal, and Lisa. You learn it the way working people always have: by showing up.
Every coffee stop on this map is also a community. Every community in CA-2 deserves a representative who actually knows them — by name, by story, by the best thing on the menu.