confessions of a starbuckener

[rezendi]

Starbucken¹ Internationale

	America	Canada	UK	France
Ubiquity	You remember that Simpsons episode where they go into a mall and every store is a Starbucks?	Omnipresent in Toronto (often directly next to or across from a Second Cup), rare elsewhere.	Everywhere in Central London, probably more common than even in Manhattan. Uncommon elsewhere.	One near metro Odéon, another opening up soon in Les Halles
Coffee sizes	Tall, grande, venti. No small.	Small - but you have to ask for it, it's not on the menu board - tall, grande, venti	Tall, grande, venti. No small.	Petit, moyen, grande. Venti exists, but you have to ask for it.
Coffee-of-the-day variations	None.	Dark Roast or Mild?	Normal or Fair Trade?	None. (and it's coffee "de la semaine", ie of the week, not of the day.)
Food	Pastries.	Pastries.	Pastries, sandwiches, salads, paninis they grill for you.	Pastries, sandwiches, salads.
Wi-Fi	Ubiquitous and reasonably priced on a monthly basis.	No.	Sometimes, but outrageously expensive.	No.
Commercial success	Variable, but generally successful.	Doing OK, but Second Cup is putting up a ferocious fight.	Very successful, largely because the previous competition was pretty much uniformly awful.	Too soon to tell, but the one at Odéon is always thronging with people, half tourists, half French.
Approximate average US$ price of a regular filter coffee	1.55	1.10	2.75	2.75

¹"Starbucken" is the plural of "Starbucks". A "Starbuckener" is a person who frequents Starbucks. Where did I get these words? I, er, made them up.

I am a fan of Starbucks. I am proud, yes, proud to say this, I do not think I am committing a moral or cultural sin by frequenting them, and I'll take you on one at a time or all in a group if I hafta!

Seriously, I don't understand the intense vitriol that Starbucks inspires in so many people. They serve somewhat overpriced coffee in pleasant surroundings. This is the work of the devil? Heck, even Oxfam is a fan, as cited here. I suppose it's not Starbucks itself but what it represents - the homogenization of the planet, the Evil Multinational Corporations that are Destroying The Earth, the Yuppie Scum who drink their coffee - which is so hated. And coffee being the second most internationally traded commodity in the world (after oil), coffee shops are a natural target for antiglobalisers. All the same, honestly, I just don't get it. But this leads inevitably into my pro-Third-World-sweatshop rant, and, well, we probably don't have time for that in this episode of The World According To rezendi.

I guess there's also the "destroys local coffee shops" argument. Except, first of all you all saw that South Park episode right?, and second of all, they don't. They just destroy the bad ones that people don't like. That's how competitive trade works. Good coffee shops survive, thrive, and innovate. It's capitalism in action at its finest.


Now reading: Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, which is a fantasy novella wrapped inside a tale of doomed Depression-era love wrapped inside in a twentieth-century family saga told by a dying old woman. ("Oh," I can hear you all sniffing, "one of those".) Stunningly great, so far. Atwood is almost too good for her own good - her similes are amazing, but there are so many of them that if the rest of her writing was any less taut it would start to feel cluttered. It's interesting to compare and contrast with Richler, whose writing is livelier and more personal but doesn't have the same distant, devastating power. He's red wine; she's single-malt Scotch.


Still not sure if I'm going to go to India, but I think the visa problem is solved; I should be able to get a same-day visa from the consulate in Toronto, when back there early October. And for less than half the price it would cost in Paris. Why are things almost always much cheaper in Canada compared to the other First World places I go? I'm not complaining, I'm just economically bewildered.

20,000 words into my new book, I have decided it has gone horribly wrong almost from the start. At least I now think I know what I want to do with it. But in future I really gotta try to work more efficiently.

Comments

[tyellas.livejournal.com]

I'd say they're in the bigger smaller towns here in NZ, such as Rotorua, and absent in other spots. Here they're pretty thorough about having sandwiches and savory pies in the food case.

The local attitude towards Starbucks in NZ is that you don't go for the coffee - if you want that you go to a local cafe chain that makes coffee a religion, and there are several - you go for the teas, the Frappucinos (there are over 20 variants, only half involving coffee), and the reliably stocked food case. Starbucks also stays open later than many of the NZ cafe chains, which close around 3 or 4. As in Australia, you wouldn't take someone you wanted to impress to a Starbucks. That's where the other local cafes come in.

I occasionally go to Starbucks here because I like their hot chocolate with whipped cream (most places here serve it with milk foam and endless chocolate syrup garnish, which can be very good, but it's not the hot chocolate I had as a kid in the US) and their vaguely American cinnamon buns (the only ones in NZ). Three weeks ago, I went to a Starbucks near where I work. I hadn't been near Starbucks in months, but it was a very cold day and I thought I deserved a hot chocolate. As I sat there sipping, one of my co-workers came by and said, "Of course the American is at Starbucks!"

I'm very proud of myself for not killing this co-worker.