Meet Joseph Long, who found a community without looking for one
Through the end of September, we’re celebrating the people who, every day, make life in the Sacramento region meaningful and interesting. Through 12 stories, a collection of short profiles, you’ll “Meet your neighbors.” Read more here.
Every morning, Joseph Long is at Temple Coffee on H Street in East Sacramento before much of the city gets moving.
He gets there no later than 6 a.m. and may stay three or four hours.
Some days the same people are there. Other days, the mix changes. Someone leaves, someone else pulls up a chair. There are retirees, professionals, people working on laptops and people simply talking.
Over time, it became Joseph’s community — something he was not even looking for.
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For more than two decades, Joseph owned and operated the Kiss and Tell adult boutiques in the Sacramento area, businesses his father started when Joseph was still in high school. He took them over at 23. Last year, he closed them.
Online shopping changed the business. Shoplifting became a problem. And Joseph says the stores became more isolating.
A few years before closing, a friend suggested meeting for coffee at Temple. Joseph showed up — and has been going ever since.
He began recognizing people. Then talking with them. Before long, he knew many of the regulars and found himself part of a group that crossed ages, professions, beliefs and backgrounds.
For someone who spent years working in a business where customers often came seeking a private kind of escape, Joseph had found something very different for himself — connection.
He says the coffee shop has changed the way he looks at life.
“I don’t feel like I’m the same pessimistic thinker I used to be,” he says. “I see possibilities. I have hope.”
Now 47 and retired, Joseph says he often goes to bed looking forward to getting back to Temple the next morning for coffee and camaraderie.
“It’s like finding a long-lost peer group or family that I didn’t have. I didn’t spend time with people like this in my 20s and 30s, and all of the sudden I’m sitting at a table with these amazing, impressive, nice and incredibly kind people.”
Sometimes, Joesph goes twice a day, spending the afternoon at his home away from home.
