by David M. Poole
When my wife woke up on Mother’s Day morning, I uttered the question she wanted to hear. “Can I walk up to Starbucks and get you a coffee?”
“Yes, honey,” she said in that tone that lets me know I’ve gotten it right.
“What do you want?”
“Let me write it down,” she said, reaching for the notepad on the bedside table.
Just before 9, I set off for Starbucks on Robinson Street clutching a piece of paper that read: “Venti Nonfat Misto”
I have no idea what that means. Since my personal vices do not include an addiction to caffeine, so I’ve never bothered to learn Starbucks-speak. All I know is that you can just walk up the counter and ask for a small cup of coffee. You have to ask for a, uh, well – I don’t know what they call it.
When it came my turn to order, I simply handed the cashier the slip of paper.
“Venti Nonfat Misto!”
The cashier rang up the sale. “Two sixty-two” he said.
In a matter of seconds, the guy mixing the drinks called out, “Venti Nonfat Misto” and placed on the counter what the non-initiated might call an extra large cup of coffee.
I find the whole Starbucks thing a little silly. I don’t have anything against track lighting, Latin groove and the sensibility of an interior brick wall. I just don’t get the appeal of coffee. To me, stepping into a Starbucks is like going back in time to those parties in high school where certain friends were experimenting with marijuana. They had this bond I could never understand.
The same sense of alienation comes over me anytime I step into a Starbucks. Still, I can’t help but to admire the company’s incredible success in transforming a retail operation into a cult. People are not just buying coffee. They are reaffirming their hipness. Not to mention the satisfaction of going to a foreign place and knowing the language.
Behind every Starbucks is the ghost of one or two local coffee shops. I thought of that as I walked home, past the shuttered door of Wired. My wife used to be a regular there, back when it was World Cup in the early 1990s. Later, she and many of her friends took their business to Carytown when Betsy Thomas opened her no-named shop there.
I remember how my wife used to say she didn’t care for Starbucks because they tend to over-roast their coffee. But times change. Ever since Starbucks opened in the Fan, my wife has joined the cult. She has drunken the Kool-Aid. Or at least the Venti Nonfat Misto — whatever that is.
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Illustration by F.T. Rea
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