For various reasons, I've long wanted to hate Starbucks Coffee, more specifically the retail chain and not their coffee itself, but have found myself unable to do so.Sure, they're a huge corporation making millions of dollars and sure they're everywhere, but damn it, their coffee' s good.
Sure, they have competitors here in Atlanta, and while I try to support them, Caribou Coffee's vanilla flavoring taste way too "chemical," and although Drinkmor Coffee has got the good vanilla, they only have one location that's in an inconvenient (to me) part of town (it's near the UCV).
Starbucks, however, is virtually everywhere, their coffee's damn fine, they let people like me lounge around their stores and noodle on our laptops, as long as we at least occasionally sample their products, and they usually play at least soothing, if MOR, music.
And today, despite my vague suspicion that there's something politically incorrect about them and my latent desire to dislike them, I stopped in for an afternoon quad vente vanilla latte (the only really legitimate reason I can think of to hate them is that they make you call a large coffee "vente," a medium "grande," and a small "tall"), and found the following printed on the side of my cup:
The Way I See It # 88
People use the word "zen" a lot, usually referring to someone being zoned out or disconnected from reality. The popular idea about zen or meditation is that it makes you passive or remote. My experience after a dozen years sitting and following my breath a little each day is that I feel more active and more connected to day-to-day life - not less.
- Algernon D'Ammassa, Actor, writer and Starbucks customer. He lives at a zen center in Los Angeles.
The term "Zen" is often used in some really dumb ways in a lot of merchandising, and as soon as I saw the word on the side of the cup, I groaned slightly to myself. But on reading the text, I realized that whoever Algernon D'Ammassa is, he seems to have a pretty good handle on Zen practice.
And I can't hate a big corporation, no matter how pervasive they are, for printing his thought on the side of their cups.
4 comments:
I wonder sometimes about my coffee habit...it probably motivates the direct destruction of more habitat than my petroleum habit does.
Less often, the dollars rescue beleaguerd third world farmers...the nicest examples I know of are the fair traded coffee I buy from Terroir which they buy from a coop run by Rwandans widowed by the genocide there.
The Karagoto and Yergacheff from Terroir are to die for. They have completely spoiled me and I can't set foot in a Starbucks now unless I am away from home.
Mind you, I may be a bit extreme. There is an espresso machine and good burr grinder beside my desk and another setup on my kitchen counter. Whole beans in the freezer and ground seconds before brewing.
CoffeeAM.com and Sacred Grounds have also fetched us some very fine [but generally pricey] beans.
Consistent quality of beans, perfected roasting technique, roast dated packaging, roast-to-order production process and state of the art storage and shipping for the beans...George Howell has it all and doesn't charge that much more than Starbucks. He founded a chain of coffee shops called Coffee Connection decades ago, Starbucks bought him out and the Boston area coffee scene gradually descended back into dunkin donutesque mediocrity. Peet's brought their severely overroasted product back east...I guess some people are happy to drink reputation if the decor is nice.
The one coffee I ever bought from Starbucks and enjoyed was their Mocha Sanani...but the quality and freshness has been way off lately and freshness is the sine qua non in coffee. What Starbucks IS good for is the equipment. Their $250 "barista" espresso is actually a rebranded Saeco, parts interchangeable and orderable from Saeco USA, Their "barrista" burr grinder is durable, produces a fine and consistent grind and unlike nearly every other grinder, is NOT a static electricity generator with a grinder freature thrown in.
Well, gotta go, I'm late for my 3rd cup.
We have the same problem with Starbucks. Want to boycott them, but can't. It's the only place you can walk in and know you'll come out with a consistantly great cup of coffee.
Algernon d'Ammassa does know what he is talking about. He's a Dharma Teacher and the former Abbot of the Dharma Zen Center in L.A. (Also a stage actor with Equity card in good order.) He also was and is affiliated with the Providence Zen Center.
I go for organic fair trade coffee, myself. Blue Bottle Coffee in Oakland is to die for.
I've wanted to hate Starbucks too. When they opened in our town, my two favorite family-owned coffee places soon closed. But, as corporations go, Starbucks does seem reasonably conscientious. So, I won't hate them, I'll just nurture a low-level, petty grudge.
Post a Comment