The Inevitable Joke About Logan Square's Gaslight Coffee Goes Viral

By Mae Rice in Food on May 31, 2016 2:19PM

Photo via Yelp

Over Memorial Day weekend, the inevitable joke about Logan Square's Gaslight Coffee Roasters (2385 N. Milwaukee Ave.) blew up on Twitter. Here it is, y'all:

This tweet isn't an actual customer-barista exchange that happened at Gaslight, though some confused souls seem to think it is. This guy is so, so close to in on the joke:

Alas, Mr. TED is not quite there. Everything at Gaslight, in real life, is great. (They've made two of our Best Of lists.) The joke above, which is not a true story but a humorous joke, is a pun on "gaslighting," a term that has gone much more mainstream since Gaslight opened in 2012. If you're not familiar, it's a "form of emotional abuse that causes a victim to question their own feelings, instincts, and sanity," according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. It usually involves telling victims things along the lines of "It's all in your head" or, you know, "You're crazy."

We probably should not have explained the joke this much, and will not explain it further. If you don't get it at this point, you are hopeless, but charmingly so. Maybe you are a dad.

The tweet above made us wonder, though—where does Gaslight's name actually come from?

Gaslight co-founder Zak Rye explained to Chicagoist, via email:

The name is, first, a reference to our in-house roastery. Coffee roasters are gas fired and typically have a small glass window on one side so the roaster can observe the flame level, hence, gaslight. Second, Tristan [Coulter, Gaslight's other co-founder] and I are both fairly obsessed with Chicago history, especially aesthetically. The Gaslight space was a drug store in the late 1800s, and we had intended to pay some homage to that in our build out and design. There's a somewhat overt connection to the modern coffee shop and the apothecaries of the late 1800s—get your fix, all that. We really wanted to outfit the place with gas lighting, but it turned out to be not only horribly expensive, but also really tricky with the current building codes. So, in a nutshell, the name is a reference to the roastery and also a nod to my and Tristan's aesthetics. One day, we really hope to at least replace the front door lighting with actual gas lamps.

So, there's the real story. And, if you want clarification that tweet is just a joke—a made-up, not-real joke, oh my god, have you ever been on Twitter before—Rye said so himself.