I remember this, and that really was about the year it happened. The hangout for my bored teenage friends and I was the local Dennys. We would just pile into a booth and drink cup after cup of coffee, talking for hours. Sometimes we would even order food. Then an indie coffee shop popped up in our small downtown. It had art on the walls, open mics, poetry readings. It was like "wtf?" For a bored teenager this was heaven. It gave us a place to congregate and be social with each other without pissing off the management.
In college I used to study at them all the time just so I could fulfill my obligations while simultaneously be doing something at least minimally social."Coffee culture" didn't slowly evolve, it just sort of... HIT about 1989.