Better Than Starbucks!

Why Better Than Starbucks? – An Addendum

 

First of all I am honor bound to state categorically how much I agree with Anthony Uplandpoet Watkins regarding Starbucks. The validity of every point that he made in his Why Better Than Starbucks? essay is so completely salient that I am ashamed that I hadn’t written something similar as well.

 

What I do, however, feel is incumbent on me is to amplify his points in the sense of how so many people have been taken in by this company’s ability to not only market a product that is so apparently inferior, but to make it almost a status symbol.

 

A cup of coffee has always been one of a couple of things: a quick, hot drink to simply be enjoyed in a large variety of ways from walking along the street sipping after picking up a cup at a sidewalk vendor to sharing after a leisurely repast with friends at a café, often enjoying the good talk Mr. Watkins alluded to about poetry, literature, art, politics, etcetera and et al.

 

Asking a woman to join a man for a cup of coffee was an innocent way to break the ice when one, or the other, seemed interested enough to want to get to know the other without taxing standards of propriety. I guess I should mention here that the standards of propriety have deteriorated in proportion to the standards of coffee making in a world of deteriorating standards. But I am digressing.

 

To resume the Starbucks effect of a strata of society obsessed with status, the Starbucks menu is riddled with ubiquitous names of fanciful concoctions. None of which take away from their creation of a language of their own for cup size differentiation. What ever happened to the simple small, medium, large of generations of coffee and other beverage establishments?

 

Being the iconoclast that I am when I am absolutely forced to enter a Starbucks to obtain a simple cup of coffee because it is the only game in town (see Mr. Watkins’ explanation of triangulation) I absolutely and categorically refuse to lower myself into their world of stylish lingo and simply ask for a small regular coffee.

 

My plan is to do this as seldom as possible — never is actually an even better plan.

 

To all of the Starbucks aficionados, I wish you good luck surviving the hyperbole perpetrated on you which you have so willingly adopted into your personal lexicon as you excoriated your taste buds.

 

I wish you all luck in the wasteland created by Starbucks.

 

However, for those of you wishing an antidote, a very good place to turn would be Better Than Starbucks! as it will not only refresh your palate, it will excite your mind with great books, sharp wit and exciting authors.

 

My advice is to find a really good cup of coffee, a comfortable chair, and settle in for a great read where the feast is truly Better Than Starbucks!