More signs of the end-times–from the New York Times: a cup of coffee from a machine which costs more than a car. A good car.

Like the politically conservative 1971 Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry, this story is set in San Francisco–where the Times finds the Blue Bottle Cafe poised to take delivery of a halogen-powered, Japanese-made device which costs 20 Gs–and brews a cup of coffee.

That’s right: no one-percent half-cap decaf here. It brews coffee. So does your old man.

The gizmo is called a siphon bar, and it comes with all the brass trimmings, bamboo paddles and glass globes you’d expect of so Rube Goldberg-ian an apparatus.

The importer is someone called Jay Egami, of the Ueshima Coffee Company–but apparently, you can’t just rush out and score one of these things, the way you can with the $11,000 Clover coffee brewer.

“If you just want equipment you’re not ready,” Egami tells the Times. After much ado–and $20,000-the Blue Bottle Cafe is ready–and already, coffee aficionados are jubilant.

“Could this be the age of brewed coffee? ‘We’re right there at the threshold,’ ” coffee bean retailer George Howell exults.

I don’t know what to say except to point out the obvious: that the coffee doesn’t cost $20,000–just the machine. (And to wonder if $20,000 coffee is $20,000 good.)

Maybe this is some kind of payback for all the years when we drank really, really, really bad coffee with our meals.

Oh, and in other news, the Times reports that temporary tattoos are back. Yay.

Tags: " Clint Eastwood, "Dirty Harry, $20, 000 cup of coffee, Blue Bottle Cafe, California, Clover coffee brewer, George Howell, Jay Egami, Long Beach, new york times, Rube Goldberg, San Francisco, Southern California, temporary tattoos, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas, Ueshima Coffee Company