Before the turn of the century, coffee shops and cafes used to be little oasis’ of independent local music, no-budget film screenings, and just a good place for people to sit and talk. Sometimes you’d have a date at one, in my case gauging the potential relationship by what the other drank (So, you ordered decaf, huh? Well, listen, it’s getting kind of late…). Coffee shops, especially when you grow up in a town where only one  out of every ten people could spell ‘existentialism’, were a place to meet others, and do as much or as little with what you had  as you wanted. 

Sure, there are coffee shops still around. I’m sitting in one right now (but we’ll come back to that in a minute). But that vibe? The comfy thrift store furniture and weird kitsch that would dress the walls? The slacker champions and the chess pro’s? I’m afraid they’re gone. B’bye… see you next time around. 

This is not the fault of Starbucks. They’re big, red, shiny and rich… but they’re not the target of our ire. Starbucks is actually a great company, and the benefits provided for their employees alone make me brand-loyal. But while the Starbucks and the Dunkin’ Donuts and the Gorilla’s have dominated a landscape that used to be privately owned, they didn’t kill the Coffee Shop. 

We did. 

Let’s admit it. Every time we wanted and wailed that our favorite coffee be available at the ungodly hour of the morning we had to wake up. Every time we wanted to do a meeting with a possible business partner or collaborator. Every time we complained because the coffee wasn’t quite right. Starbucks and their competitors didn’t have to fight their way in… we invited them. 

Don’t forget that a lot of coffee shops were, to be fair, dumps. Low rent meant greater survival in a fickle and sometimes niche market. With the recent real estate wave, where a art and beauty has given way to the Great God of Lifestyle, people were practically demanding a higher-scale establishment. Want that property value to increase, dammit!

(and if that little sentiment seems a little bitter to you, maybe a little too jaded to be true? Click HERE)

So, now I sit in the Tea Lounge, on Union Street in Brooklyn. I sit between two gentlemen who, like me, or doing their best to get some work done in an atmosphere more conducive to clear thought then an office, and without the distractions provided by home. We are three monkeys, all covering our ears, as hoards of power-broker mothers and snooty nannies cart truckloads of children to and fro. There’s a young man, playing guitar, and singing nursery rhymes at the top of his voice. For what must be the eight time in ten minutes, I want to kill him. In front of the children. 

Now, I could be biased. I don’t like children. They’re noisy, rude, you can trip over them really easy, and the smell of feces has ruined my coffee. If it shits in public, keep it out of my damn coffee shop. 

So, there you have it. What used to be a place of thought and independence is a day-care center for the perpetually bored. There isn’t a single book in sight, Beyonce on the radio, and all of a sudden a thought comes into my head. 

“Dammit. Where’s there a Starbucks when I REALLY need it?”

Happy New Year,

-J

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.