During the first several years in the deans' office of the University College division of Loyola University Chicago I worked downtown at their Water Tower Campus. Having become habituated to cafes since seminary days in Manhattan, I took my lunchless lunches at a place called "Coffee Chicago" on Chicago Avenue. Soon another CC opened in my own neighborhood on the north side and I became a friend of the owner, Candace. Indeed, it turned out that she lived only two blocks from my own building in the Rogers Park neighborhood.
The connection with Candace got me to favor Coffee Chicago over its competitors. Eventually there were six of the places. Unique among them was one on Clark Street, a few blocks north of Belmont. It served beer and wine in addition to coffees. The Belmont area was a relatively (to now, that is) happening place in the nineties, I had friends in the area, so occasionally I'd bus or walk down there. It was at this outlet that I read most, if not all, of Weber's Sociology of Religion, having picked it because Max Weber was on the core list of "great books" read by students at Shimer College where I hoped to obtain a teaching job.
Maybe it was the beer alternating with coffee, maybe it was because I knew too much--or too little--about religion, maybe it just wasn't the right time. Whatever, reading The Sociology of Religion left me pretty cold, religion interesting me more for understanding what it's like to subscribe to this, that or the other religion and not too much insofar as religions may serve social functions.