Lincoln eateries come and go with regularity, but The Mill preserves its caffeinated grip.
By Paula Lavigne (’98)
ESPN investigative reporter
Between the imploded residence halls and razed buildings and the swank new storefronts and parking garages, today’s Lincoln campus is a difficult place for a mid-’90s student to get her bearings.
Nebraska Union got a makeover. Classic Broyhill Fountain was converted into a modern “water feature.” The journalism college I visit now is a streamlined multistory high-tech lab, far from the cramped but quaint quarters in Avery Hall where all those pesky journalists could monitor the goings on at Memorial Stadium.
And downtown is almost unrecognizable. Gone is the one-of-a-kind Rock ’n’ Roll Runza, the Valentino’s, Crane River, and the Spaghetti Works on 12th Street where I cashed in piles of those $2.99 buffet coupons we published in The Daily Nebraskan. And today’s hipster Haymarket Railyard used to be just that — a railyard, where I once actually boarded a real train.
But there is one place — one “love” of mine from back then — that has remained true to my memory: The Mill coffee shop on 8th and P streets. When I walk in there today, it is almost like stepping back into 1993.
(Technically, I could say the same thing about a few O Street bars, but those were more of a love/hate relationship, so I opted for the coffee shop paean instead.)
I was an incredibly misguided youth in college; I was a journalism major who attended AND actually studied for my classes.
I found The Mill my freshman year and settled in. It was far enough from campus but still an easy walk. Bright enough to keep me awake, but subdued and quiet enough for me to zone out with my Sony CD Walkman as I played through my collection of Pink Floyd albums, reading intently about media law, European political conflict, or the Fujita scale for a meteorology class that fulfilled my science requirement. I sketched out newspaper articles, sweated over story pitches and transcribed interviews between drinking cups and cups of amazing coffee.
My love story begins in the corner table closest to the windows on a bench up against the exposed brick wall, a giant cup of coffee (most likely snickerdoodle) — with two brown sugar cubes — steaming in front of me. Their coffee was like rocket fuel and it was amazing. Those 25 cent refills kept me holed up there for hours on end.
Sometimes I’d splurge on a scone. They had the best scones, dense but crumbly. But the relatively cheap coffee was my constant, and even a whiff of it as I walked in the door took me out of whatever mental whirlwind I was in that day and allowed me to step into a slightly more contented state of mind.
What also makes this is a good love story is that it has endured. When I walk into The Mill today — as I have on my occasional visits to Lincoln over the past two decades — it looks and smells almost exactly the same. And it’s lovely.
Yes, there are three newer locations elsewhere in Lincoln, and yes, they have almond milk and Wi-Fi, but the red awning, the rustic cabin-like décor, the wall of coffee beans, the logo and the nicked wooden tables all remain downtown.
Most of the time I’m there, I’m zipping in to grab a latte and a bag of snickerdoodle beans to take home. But sometime soon I hope to snag a spot on the wide concrete patio and spend a few hours back in the mid-’90s.
That’s my love story, one 25 cent refill at a time.