Hey, have you heard? A new coffee place just opened. Maybe you have—and it’s likely we’re not even thinking of the same one.

Tim Hortons. Dunkin’ Donuts. Starbucks. Spot.

One thing we’re definitely not depriving ourselves of, in this recession-plagued world, is fresh hot coffee.

Look around you. People are buying it at kiosks at the grocery store. Students are loading up on campus, mere steps from their classrooms. Gas stations come with coffee drive-throughs, and my in-laws tell me—I haven’t, thank God, seen this for myself—that there are now car wash places around here that offer coffee bars.

A mocha while your car is waxed? Only in America.

But it’s no joke, this coffee boom in Western New York, and it has barely been slowed by the tough economy.

Right now, Tim Hortons is up to 200 shops in Western New York, including 74 locations inside Tops stores, company spokesman David Morelli said.

(We have, by comparison, 25 towns and 16 villages, so you do the math. That feeling you get that you are never farther than a mile from a fresh pour is because you aren’t.)

At the company’s headquarters, Morelli said that Buffalo folks like Tim’s so much that we actually count as one of their best markets even when you factor in— get ready for it—their Canadian locations.

Yes. We are now outeating most Canadians in the Timbits department.

Something’s going on here. Is it good? Is it bad? Are we too caffeine-crazed to care?

Morelli sees a simple reason for the java saturation. Even in a bad economy, he said, people still need a place to go, for relaxation, that isn’t home or work. Students, seniors, stay-at-home moms— they all help Tim’s do very well here, he said.

“It’s clean, it’s friendly, and it’s affordable,” Morelli said. “Those are three key attractions to students and seniors, and they are very important to our business.”

That came as no surprise to moms Amanda Beltren and Sena Jones, who were picking up their orders at the Tim Hortons that opened on Seneca Street in South Buffalo recently.

“It gets you out of the house,” said Jones, 35, holding a box of doughnuts. “It’s a place to go. When you have five kids. . . . ” She shook her head. “Coffee at home is not the same.”

Beltren said she goes to Tim’s every day, spending $6 to $12 each time.

“It’s crazy good,” she said, clutching her extra-large double-double.

Maybe that’s what it is. The concept of a “third place”—a neutral place where people can meet and hang out that’s not home or the office—was defined by Ray Oldenburg in a 1991 book, “The Great Good Place.” Oldenburg argued that communities need such places in order to thrive. That these spaces, which bring together all sorts of people, actually promote democracy.

That’s a much more comforting thought than the one I’ve been mulling over lately, which is this: Maybe coffee shops are so important to us now because they’ve come to mean to people what church used to.

As in: a place you go a lot, on a certain schedule; where you feel comfortable and accepted; and where you come away feeling renewed, energized—and part of something bigger than yourself.

I hope it’s the former. I hope we’re improving ourselves every time we walk up to the counter and ask for skim milk and extra sugar.

Because the opposite is a sadder prospect. It’s that, floating in this sea of caffeinated liquid, we’re just the tiniest bit adrift.