(Long Island, NY) I woke up this morning, hurriedly stuffed some peanut butter in my mouth, and got right in to a can of ice-cold Starbucks iced coffee. It disappeared in about two seconds. Damn those evil Starbucks people, they gave me yet another EMPTY CAN! Well, it had been full two seconds ago. I can’t quite understand how it disappeared so quickly, but a lady friend once observed my daily ritual and wrinkled her nose in mild disgust.
“Don’t you savor…ANYTHING?”
Well, of course I do, dear girl. But first thing in the morning, the desperate journalist is not interested in savoring ANYTHING except the sudden jolt of caffeine, the widening eyes, the hyper-alertness of the dedicated coffee-slammer.
There are times when I force myself to go cold turkey, because I get myself so far gone that I must drink the evil brew round the clock to stave off the shakes. It’s the old, old story. One Double-shot leads to two, which leads to three, and before you know it, you’re jittery and upset whether you’ve had your coffee or not. It makes you an evil human being, the kind that grows fangs and claws in rush hour traffic. You roll down your windows, snarling and spitting at anyone driving even one mile per hour below the speed limit. Don’t they UNDERSTAND? The rest of us are REALLY IN A HURRY!
In a hurry to go to the bathroom, that is. After all, the side effects to being a 12-hour-a-day java junkie is an endless run back and forth. Horrible. Cold turkey MUST happen when you can’t even count how many times you must leave the room to go to the used coffee department.
The other day, while musing about being such a caffeine-head, I spotted a news story about Rupert Everett’s crusade against a Starbucks going up in his neck of the woods. Everett was upset because there were already plenty of pushers, er, coffee shops in the area, and the presence of Starbucks represented an over saturation, plus the encroachment of corporate nonsense into the otherwise independent business culture of the area.
I sympathize with this notion, as we all know what happens when the cookie-cutter businesses start muscling in where the mom-and-pops and indies are now. Bad things happen. Mom and pop can’t compete any more, they fold up and go home. Suddenly those home made goodies you loved so well are gone, replaced by some kind of mass-produced starchy dough with a sprinking of chocolate-flavored tar on top. The relaxed chats over a single cup? Gone. That cute, gossipy young lady with the green hair working her way thru college? Out of a job. She’ll have to go down the road to Starbucks and be one of five cute gossipy young things with green hair, instead of being the cool anomaly she was at the mom-n-pop. Good bye, individualism, good bye home-baked treats, good-bye quirky acoustic music open mic nite.
Everett wants his quaint old mom-n-pop café, and I agree. There is nothing at all in the world like home made cookies, tarts, pastry of any kind. It doesn’t matter what the COFFEE tastes like, after all, for junkies like me it’s gone in 60 seconds anyway.
For me, the REAL evil of Starbucks is how easy they make it to get hooked. Those convenient cans of iced coffee, perfect for when you are in too much of a hurry to wait in line for somebody to make your double-tall-extra-shot-skim-milk-gorilla-biscuit-a-la-mode-honey-encrusted-iced-goldfrapp-a-chino. The mom-n-pop outfit wants you to come in, get comfy, and stay a while. Make yourself at home, relax, and SAVOR something. Those of us hooked on that other place have no time for relaxation, we need our fix and we don’t even care if we can taste it.
I hope Rupert Everett wins his crusade, as the world needs more mom-n-pop businesses to thrive and survive. As for my neighborhood, I’m afraid it’s far too late. Starbucks is right across the street, and the whole block would set themselves on fire if the place ever closed up shop. We’d just lay down in the road and howl for an 18-wheeler to come and run us all over. We’re doomed, hooked for life, and there’s nothing anybody can do to save us. If Rupert Everett’s neighborhood gets one, he’ll be doomed like all the rest, and he knows it. That’s why he wants to stop the addiction before it starts. Save the indie coffee house, where people can sit down and savor.
I don’t know where any of this was really going, and I’m not sure I’ll care until I get another cup of coffee. I think it had something to do with Starbucks being the biggest drug pusher in the whole world, but I know that it’s nobody’s fault but our own. We keep buying the stuff, all of us bleary-eyed early morning zombies, shuffling down to the place where the gulping is easy. We could all just make the damn black sludge at home, but it’s too much trouble, all that measuring, water pouring, filter changing, coffee pot cleaning…we just… keep…going…to…Starbucks. It’s easy. It’s fun. It’s at least 25 bucks a week, a hundred a month, 1200 dollars a year all poured down my throat as quickly as I can get the stuff in me for the rush, the buzz, the reason to live.
It’s too late for me, but there’s still time for Rupert.
