Why I Like Starbucks

The pros and cons of Starbucks are both too obvious and tiresome for me to write about.

I like that their employees get health insurance, and that they follow relatively fair labor and trade practices. The music is often better than expected -- I once heard a Rolling Stone's Exile on Main Street outtake that was so good it made me want to take heroin and buy a two-track recorder -- and I've heard the Tom Waits version of "Long Way Home," not the blander version by I-don't-care-what-you-think-about-her she's-still-a-sex-kitten Norah Jones, in which things are a little little forlorn but there's a light up ahead....

We know Starbucks over-roasts and does disservice to some coffee farmers by emphasizing identity-robbing blends. We know they offer shitty sandwiches and overpriced almonds. We know that there is an air of sameness to them, an air of the empire of plastic and industrial design. But I don't want to go have to read Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" looking for quotes, and I also am feeling a little too grumpy to let my cultural identity be formed by such relatively banal choices such as where I take my cup.

What do I go to a cafe for anyway? I'm not speaking for you, just myself, and I'm being honest. I go to drink coffee, yes, but I'm also there to read, to get out of the house, to look at pretty girls, and to engage in some sort of public activity, in a public place, for social reasons. On the production of the coffee business, we are philosophers, and truth ideally triumphs over all. But in the cafe, experience reigns -- the languages spoken, the fashion, the art on the walls, the music, all these things are part of the context. A great cup drunk among loudmouths on cellphones is hardly worth it. And an ashy cup on a cold night in Lowell among daydreamers and meth addicts and girls with mismatched socks? One of life's great and rare pleasures.

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So, leaving aside how people somehow feel I ought to think about a place, what do I actually feel?

When I lived in Tampa, I spent most of my cafe hours in the Starbucks near the University of South Florida campus. There was an independent coffee house nearby. It was refreshingly gay-friendly in a not-so-liberal city and held poetry nights. There was art on the walls. Local bohemian types from the Suitcase City neighborhood frequented there. But the fucking lighting! You couldn't read a menu in that place, it was so dark. So, I had the Starbucks. And in that Starbucks, I graded two years worth of student papers. I read Husserl. I argued with friends over Heidegger and Catholicism. There, I met a man who taught me how to play a song on a banjo, and another who introduced me to the local Indian classical musical society. I have good memories of that place.

When I was in New York, it wasn't a great time for independent cafes, or at least ones that were within walking distance from my apartment. The Astor Place Starbucks was past midnight. I was able to walk there easily from my apartment on Bleeker Street. There, I sat and read Byron. I saw the most beautiful people in the world walk by the window and I looked at their boots and their necklaces and their hair. I watched punkers try to spin the giant cube-art that stood outside.

One time, a stunning Russian woman knocked on the glass where I was sitting, and pointed at the book I was reading. I didn't understand the words she was trying to mouth to me. So she came inside and talked with me for half an hour, asking me about the book. "You looked so into it, I had to ask." I wondered if this could possibly be happening. This woman was doll-like, an impossible pristine face, but she had a long meltingly toothy grin and that grin? Well, she was smiling at my stupid jokes!

But then, a hard-faced Russian man suddenly knocked on the glass and motioned for her to follow him outside. It was probably her husband. She didn't kiss me on the cheek when she left. I never saw her again. In those early days in NYC, I was as invisible as any man, except, perhaps, for that one night.

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In the same Starbucks, I watched Fisherspooner play one of their first shows when they were just a street act.

Kembra, the singer of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, showed nude polaroids of herself, completely painted in red, to a friend, while I was spending a lonely Friday night alone, studying.

And then, one day, while I sat writing in a notebook, Henry Rollins sat next to me. He also opened a notebook and took out a pen and started writing. The man who sang the greatest punk song ever about my favorite drink, "Black Coffee," was sitting next to me. I don't think I ever idolized him, or anyone, but he was certainly a major figure in my life when I was growing up. This was the man who had stopped punk rock shows so he could read passages from Henry Miller. This was the man who made me understand that music at its most vital could be both smart and dangerous. He was a force, a cultural icon, and whatever it was he did that so mystified me or intrigued me when I was younger boiled down to this one thing we had in common: we drank coffee and we worked alone.

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And then, well, there was my favorite Starbucks of all, the one in South Nashua. Henry Rollins never walked through the door and I never saw anyone passing nude polaroids of themselves. But in those horrible days last year and into this when I was struggling to put my head together, I sat there and wrote page after page of poetry. I drew cartoons for a book of children's poetry I was writing. I read Houellebecq for pleasure and Napoleon Hill to try to figure out how to drag myself out of the hole. There was always a free cushioned chair and the staff were gently pleasant to me, making me feel welcome day after day as I scribbled away, scratching my beard and watching the wind shake the strange tree that grew across the street.

Not long after I stopped going there, the place was shut down. Not because it didn't do well, but because of problems with the landlord. And, with that, the best Starbucks I had ever known was gone forever.

And so this is why I like Starbucks.