my no-starbucks policy

admittedly, my near-universal boycott of all things chain store-related isn't entirely grounded in logic. but everytime i make the scary journey out to one of the plentiful sterile suburbs, where massive mini-malls interlock with each other and the cheesecake factory wins the readers poll every year for best splurge restaurant, i'm reminded that this might not be paranoia but prescience on my part.

now that i've left the city and am now forced to call myself a resident of one of these culturally vacuous towns though, i wonder how i should adjust my policy. should i continue to forgo the convenience of the starbucks and blockbuster videos of the world? after all, just about everything worth saving is already gone. and i've never been one to say that the convenience of the super store has no place in this world, simply no place in the world that i inhabit.

suburban philistines are free to get lost in the endless aisles of kitsch made by the hands of illegal mexicans which line the shelves at walmart. if suburbanites need a starbucks on every corner to stop the vertigo caused by anything not completely familar to them, so be it. to each their own, if it is sick, wrong and a little bit disturbing.

but i figured, when in rome, so as any self-respecting palo altan would do when he wanted to get out of the house and do a little work at a local cafe: head to the local starbucks.

so at 830 on a sunday evening, i hopped in my car to make the 1/2-mile journey. and when i arrived, the first thing i noticed a sticker on the glass door proclaiming this a tmobile hotspot. silently i wondered if this meant that i was going to have to pay to connect to the web. immediately i began to think this place sucked -- even outside the city.

still, emboldened by my determination to get some work done, i pulled the door open and walked in. i turned to the miniature cafe area, filled by a dozen, miniature circular tables and a small work area. and to my chagrin, every space was taken. perhaps, even more annoying was that all the tables were far too small to be shared with my laptop. so even had there been an attractive young lady sitting on her own, she would have had to remain unaccompanied.

and so goes my visit to starbucks, likely not to be replicated anytime in the near future. i turned around to walk out, catching a couple of dirty looks from the two female cashiers who mistakenly believe that because their title can be prounounced with a rolling 'r' sound, they have license to be cunts.

i did drive around a bit more hoping to find a nice independent coffee merchant which i could use as my office for the next couple of hours, but all of them had closed for the evening. well, i guess it was almost 9 p.m. now. saddened, i drove home and attempted to do some work, culminating in a one-hour nap after i reorganized some newly downloaded mp3s.