At Java Girls, you don’t just get hot coffee, you get it served by hot women too. And to top it all off, they’re wearing nothing but bikinis and boots. I guess there couldn’t be a better way for men to kick-start their mornings. Java Girl’s latest franchise opened in Orlando last November, although the concept has been around since the early 2000s. Other branches are located in Oregon and Texas.

The Orlando franchise of Java Girls is co-owned by Todd and Bill Brognano, and thought to be the only bikini coffee shop located in central Florida. The shop employs only women, who come dressed to work in either bikinis or lingerie. So it’s not unusual here to spot a woman dressed in a two-piece, brewing espressos, lattes and frappucinos. And the girls don’t mind it one bit. “We like showing off what we got,” says 20-year-old Java Girl Belinda Messer. When they aren’t making coffee, the girls make it a point to stand outside the shop and entice passengers to a cup of coffee. They hold up signs like, “Now Open Extra HOT Coffee Spot.”

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Just weeks after she took the Internet by storm with her incredible portrait of Yao Ming, created only with a basketball and red paint, Malaysian artist Hong Yi strikes again, this time with a realistic rendition of Taiwanese singer Jay Chou made with coffee stains.

The young artist begins her unusual creative process by taking a sip of coffee. Like most of us, she spills some of it in the small saucer and that apparently inspires her to use the dirty bottom of the cup to start a sepia tone masterpiece. At first the coffee cup stains look just like the ones you can spot on table cloths in cheap restaurants, but as she progresses, her work starts to take shape. First you can make out the outline of the head, then the nose and mouth, the eyes, and before you know it you’re staring at a realistic portrait of Jay Chou made with coffee stains, and struggling to lift your jaw off the floor.

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Imagine you go into a coffee shop, have a cup, and when it comes to paying your bill they tell you it’s already been paid for. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Well, that’s exactly what’s happening at the Corner Perk Cafe in Bluffton, South Carolina. It all started in 2010 with a random act of kindness.

The Corner Perk was just a regular coffee place until one day, when a customer left a $100 bill with the owner, Josh Cooke. Apparently she wanted the money to be used to pay for the drinks of all the people who came in after, until it runs out. According to Cooke it was “just to let them know, you know, that somebody was wanting them to have a great day and just to let them know to pay it forward.” Needless to say, customers who came in all afternoon were puzzled when they found they didn’t have to pay for their coffee.

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Saimir Stari, one of the world’s most famous mosaic artists, is working on yet another mind-blowing masterpiece, this time using approximately one million coffee beans.

The Albanian artist known for creating large-scale art pieces made with the most unusual art mediums (from cork screws and toothpicks to paintbrushes) has recently started work on another massive mosaic, this time mad of coffee beans. Entitled “One World, One Family, One Coffee”, the original mosaic features five characters, each representing a different continent. As you might have guessed, the objective of Strati’s work is to inspire of sense of unit across the world. The patient artist is painstakingly working on his one million coffee beans mosaic in Tirana, Albania, and plans on completing the project on December 12. When finished, his unique artwork will measure 25 square meters and weigh 140 kilograms. As with his other impressive mosaic, Saimir Strati will most likely set a new Guinness record with his coffee bean project.

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Although his is the only standing building in what used to be an old neighborhood of Roubaix, in Northern France, Salah Oudjani refuses to sell the coffee house he has worked in for the last 46 years.

The title doesn’t sound like anything special, after all, many people refuse to have their property demolished, at least in the beginning, until they get a good price or they notice everyone else is selling except them. But for the 71-year-old business owner neither of the above reasons were good enough. The two-story triangular building once located at the intersection of two streets appears to be the only survivor of a serious air raid. Everything around it has been turned to rubble and taken to local landfills, brick by brick, and Oudjani’s place looks like it’s the only sign of life in a wasteland. Like all the other residents, the café owner has received numerous proposals for his property, but he never even considered selling it. “I will not sell! I worked for it, this coffee house. They will not make me go, I’m used to pressure” Oudjani says, and everyone knows he means it.

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Latvian coffee shop chain, Double Coffee, celebrated the opening of its second venue in Moscow, Russia, by creating a giant mosaic of its logo, from cups of coffee.

The event took place on June 18, on Old Arbat Street, in Moscow, where a group of designers armed with clipboards started arranging plastic cups of coffee right on the pavement. No one really knew what they planned to do, at first, but as their work started to take shape, everyone recognized the logo of coffee shop chain Double Coffee. To celebrate their second Moscow venue, right on Old Arbat Street, they used 3,300 cups, 220 liters of coffee and 120 liters of milk to recreate the brand logo. To finish the job, the young designers sprinkled ground coffee around the logo to keep the cups together. It’s not clear what happened with all the coffee once the tasty installation was dismantled, but I’m sure the curious crowd that gathered around it was more than happy to help clear the street.

A similar coffee mosaic of the Mona Lisa was created two years ago, in Sydney, Australia, using 3,603 cups of coffee and 564 pints of milk.

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Donald Crabtree opened the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop, in Vassalboro, Maine, so he, his employees and his customers could have a laugh. Now, two years later, he claims he is forced to close it down due to sabotage.

Ina town with fewer than 4,500 residents, you wouldn’t expect a controversial venture like Donald’s topless coffee shop to succeed, but it did. Back in 2009, crowds were pouring in to the only place they could be served hot coffee by topless waiters and waitresses, and the owner described his business as “fantastic”. He had hired ten women and five men, out of the almost 200 applications he received, from skinny to big boned people.  With the economy so bad at the time, the coffee shop put a smile on people’s faces and took their minds off problems.

But that was back then. These days, the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop isn’t nearly as popular as it once was, and Donald Crabtree had to make some staff cuts and reduce their hours, just to keep his business alive. He says locals have been against his innovative idea from day one, and even though he managed to hold out against their sabotage this long, enough is enough. The final straw was a series of violations reported by the town, regarding two billboard he set up, one advertising a benefit topless car wash and the other said “Boobies wanted”. Authorities say it’s not about what’s on the billboards, but their size – they’re larger than what’s permitted under his local permit and the adult-only ordinance.

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Knitting is mostly known as a favorite grannies all around the world, but at Bangkok’s Big Knit Café, it’s practiced by crafty young professionals trying to unwind.

Who would have thought knitting could be the recipe of a truly successful café business? Not many people, I’m sure, but that didn’t stop Khun Nice from starting Big Knit Café, a now internationally known venue where anyone can savor a cup of coffee or a tasty piece of cake, while knitting and learning new tips from local crafters. Even if you don’t know the first thing about knitting, all you need to do is buy a kit, and the staff at Big Knit Café will teach you everything there is to know.

Apart from all the cakes, pastry delicacies and drinks, Big Knit Café also offers a large colorful collection of yarn, from cotton and bamboo to alpaca and cashmere. The walls are practically lined with rows of yarn, and all customers have to do is decide on type and color.

Big Knit Café is far from being a knitting spot for grannies, as the place is visited by women of all ages, even college students and children, eager to discover the secrets of the art. Even some Thai celebrities stop by Big Knit Café, every once in a while, to relax in a nice, friendly atmosphere.

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With tech garbage on the rise, it’s important we always come up with new ways of disposing of it in a way that doesn’t hurt the environment, and the computer-part coffee table made by Dmaloney serves as a great example.

This unique piece of furniture is actually made of two separate coffee tables, one that holds all the circuit boards, and another that acts as the glass surface. The components you see inside the coffee table are old circuit boards and dives from the late eighties and nineties, many of which actually come from his very first computer. He managed to fit them all together, on a coffee table, like puzzle.

Another cool feature of the computer-part coffee table is the set of LED lights programmed to come on when it gets dark.

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A team of wacky scientists from BBC1’s “Bang Goes the Theory” TV show, have converted a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco into a coffee-powered car, nicknamed Car-puccino.

As revolutionary as this concept sounds, it’s more of a fun project than a cost-efficient one. The idea behind Car-puccino is relatively simple: coffee, like wood or coal, has traces of carbon in it, so it burns. Use a bucket load of coffee, heat it enough to break it down into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, direct the gases towards the engine, and you’ve got yourself a running vehicle.

That sounds easy enough, but there is a down-side to using coffee as fuel. First of all, it’s between 25 and 50 times more expensive than petrol. Car-puccino is schedule to journey 210 miles, from Manchester to London, and the team estimates it will burn through 70 kilos of coffee. Multiply that by 13-26 British pounds per kilo (depending on the quality and brand) and you get some pretty big numbers. Plus, Car-puccino will have to pull over every 60 miles or so, so the crew can clean up the filters of tar.

Pretty original idea, but I doubt we’ll ever see Car-puccino go into production. I wonder what the exhaust fumes smell like, though…Espresso?

Daily Mail via AutoRoyalty

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Karen Eland, a talented sketch artists and painter from Tulsa, uses only espresso to recreate some of the most famous paintings in history.

Karen’s talent and her love for coffee created a unique art-form that propelled her to celebrity status on the internet and TV shows. As an art student she used to practice her skills in coffee shops, seeping espressos. One day, as she was watching red-brown coffee pouring into her cup, she realized her favorite drink could be a part of her art.

That’s how it all started and over the years she became a master at blending layers upon layers of espresso and creating beautiful coffee-scented masterpieces. Some might find Karen Eland‘s way of blending a cup of coffee in her paintings offensive, but I think it makes for a perfect trademark.

Photos via Gizmodo

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Well, I think the name Mocha Lisa fits it best, and it wasn’t exactly painted in coffee, but recreated from thousands of coffee cups.

Mocha Lisa was created during The Rocks Aroma Festival, in Sydney, Australia and attracted the curious eyes of 130,000 people in just one day. This incredible coffee masterpiece took 8 people three hours to complete as well as 3,604 cups of coffee and 564 pints of milk.

The 20ft by 13ft replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s La Gioconda was created by adding various amounts of milk to the cups of coffee. I have to say the sepia effect achieved is simply incredible.

There’s a making-of video at the bottom, if you’re interested.

Photos by Alison Lyons/Solent

via Daily Mail

This isn’t some kind of coffee filter designed to look as a robot. This thing really makes coffee just like we humans do.

Designed by Clockwork,  a Japanese dude who’s into manga and robotics, the coffee-making robot uses 20 digital KRS-788HV servos, a servo motor, both controlled by a PCB located in its head. The photos don’t say much about this little Japanese coffee making robot, but you can see it in action if you scroll to the video at the bottom.

Also head over to clockwork.shikisokuzekuu.net for more pics and info (if you speak Japanese).

via Geek Alerts

A young, inspiring fashion designer created her prom dress using nothing else but coffee filters.

18-year-old Aimee Kick, from Missouri spent an entire month making her own prom dress out of coffee filters. Apparently Aimee spends a lot of her free time in local coffee shops and is known as “the girl with a coffee cup” so I guess she wanted to create an appropriate theme dress for her prom at Francis Howell North High School.

via The Fashion Police

Clips of a man bearing a shocking resemblance to Keanu Reeves’ iconic film character John Wick selling street food in Thailand have been going viral online, fueling theories that the stylish assassin had retired in the Asian country.

A few days ago, a short video with the caption “John Wick stopped killing people and turned to selling coffee and grilled squid” went viral on Thai social media, because the man featured in it bore a shocking resemblance to the popular action film character. Only here, he was not gunning down or beating up people, but selling street food and cleaning food bowls. Soon enough, other videos of the mysterious John Wick lookalike followed, including some in which he wore a suit and white tie, just like the action hero. People joked that he must be on a mission in Thailand, while others said that he was done with killing bad guys and had retreated as a street food seller.

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