Tag Archives: jared rutledge

Saturday, September 19th is the day that marked a shift in the Asheville community for years to come. When the story about Jared Rutledge and Jacob Owens, owners of the former Waking Life Espresso in West Asheville first broke, it was met with a mix of concern, disdain, outrage, and disgust. Concerned West Asheville citizens organized an impromptu protest on the sidewalk in front of the popular coffeehouse at 4 pm. Normally open until 8 pm, co-owner Jacob closed the doors to the store at 4:10. This was the start of the avalanche that suddenly immersed Asheville in a wave of a culture that few knew about: the red pill, pick up artists, and misogyny.

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11 days after the owners of Waking Life Espresso were outed for the misogynistic blog, twitter, and podcast they had kept for over 2 years, a search on Google shows the popular West Asheville coffee shop as permanently closed. 

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The now controversial coffee shop is for sale, we learned today. Protesters had resumed their stance outside, offering coffee and doughnuts to passersby. "The coffee shop is indeed for sale," one of the parties who wishes to be unnamed, told us. "At this point, it is more selling the assets than the business itself." The two individuals who had arrived at the coffee shop late this morning shared that they also own other coffee stores, and are interested in the cold brew equipment. 

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Yesterday, information was released about the two owners of Waking Life Espresso, in which it was made public that Jared Rutledge and Jacob Owens had admitted to using their place of business to further their sexual escapades. Since 2013, Rutledge and Owens have been running a podcast, Twitter, and online blog detailing the women they slept with, rating those women, and outlining the sexual acts in detail.

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Waking Life, the popular 5 year old West Asheville Coffee shop has teamed up with a local videographer to give you a visual taste of what goes into each individual cup of coffee brewed at the shop. Waking Life is a Microcafe who is currently bottles their own flash chilled coffee, available at several locations in Asheville, in addition to serving customers in their West Asheville Store. The workers of Waking Life take their coffee very seriously - check out these tidbits from their manifesto:

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