How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Behemoth

There are some topics that usher in virulent controversy no matter how bland or how calmly they’re packaged. Anyone with a family much like my own knows that when a mix of people from opposite ends of the fundamentalism stick sit down around the ol’ cornucopia at Thanksgiving there are just certain subjects that need to remain off the dinner table. Abortion, prayer in schools, gay rights, Hilary Clinton … Starbucks.

My relationship with Starbucks is long and sordid. We’ve had our ups, our downs, loyalties have been questioned, things have been thrown, I’ve been held sobbing through the night. There was a time I tried to resist completely its wily corporate charms and oh-so-rich-and-fluffy whipped cream topping, but ya know what?! Those lattes are damn tasty and always convenient and my local barista serves them with a 100-watt smile. Y’all, I am not made of stone.

[note: let us not speak of their brewed, drip coffee- or as I like to call it, "my very own two-dollar cup of liquid char"]

I know it’s a disease that is particularly acute and peculiarly American (and a part of me dies inside having to admit this), but when I was in Heidelberg, Germany last year and I saw the familiar green awning and chunky white lettering on the cobble-stoned street corner I almost wept for joy. As fervently as I tried to avoid becoming an obnoxious American tourist stereotype on that trip (believe me, they were everywhere, I hardly would have stood out), it didn’t stop me from marching straight inside my friendly European Starbucks and ordering the same beverage as always, savoring every last tastes-like-home drop. In my own defense, I happened to be unaccompanied by my translator/tour-guide/brother that morning, otherwise I’m sure we would have gone someplace else and I’d have been quite satisfied.

You sense my ambivalence don’t you? Realize, please, that I’m from a small town in Southern California that is home to not one, not two but seven independent, locally owned coffee shops; each delicious, roasted perfection, each with its own style and personality. When a Starbucks inevitably did open up in town, we were all slightly queezy. One of the local places even parked its logo-emblazoned van right out front of the new Starbucks the entire first week it was open in a meager act of defiance. But the simple capitalist truth remains: I don’t have to go there and neither does anyone else. There are now four Starbucks in my hometown and just as many, if not more, other coffee shops to choose from, so what does that tell us? I have enough Republican sensibilities brainwashed into me to realize and accept that business is business and if people didn’t want the Starbucks then they wouldn’t be multiplying like rabbits on hormone-therapy.

While I don’t subscribe to this particular brand of alarmist vehemence, I still support the idea to hand out fliers indicating other places to go, should one feel so led. In fact, I think it’s a great idea; at least if the consumer still decides to patron the Starbucks they're doing so with informed consent. It’s all part of the agony and the ecstasy of competition. And I’m the first to admit that three Starbucks within sight of each other is some kind of intense overkill. The worst I’ve seen is two within the same view in downtown Boston, three might make me dizzy and nauseated.

Overall, however, I am generally rubbed the wrong way by people who insist that Starbucks is one of the four horseman of the apocalypse and won’t shut up with their constant refrains of the tired ballad, "Starbucks is All that Wrong with the World". My general creed at this point is that if there’s someplace tastier, funkier and more power-to-the-little-man available then I’ll happily go there each and every chance I get, but if its either Starbucks or the 7-Eleven "capp-o-ccinno" machine or nothing then Starbucks it is. And I’ll like it, too. And if you happen to be That I Can Taste the Tears of the Downtrodden in Every Cup of Starbucks Coffee Guy, you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.