Why Starbucks bugs me

I'm not a corporate-hating nonconformist in most cases. I've been known to defend the likes of Wal-Mart as a triumph in providing the "good life" (defined in terms of owning a pair of Faded Glory jeans, using Suave haircare products and drinking a Sam's Choice Cola) for the common man. I've also defended it since it provides a cultural immersion experience in socioeconomic diversity every time you step in the store. Target only wishes it could do that.

But one corporate chain that has always bothered me is Starbucks. Maybe because it acts like it doesn't reek of rubber-stamp sameness, as if it were elite and indie and smart. But when there are 16,000 cafes in the world that all use the same "chic lighting" and play the same "esoteric" music and use the same pretentious faux-Italian terms like "Venti," suddenly there is nothing chic, esoteric, or venti about it. It just becomes the "cool addiction" of slightly outmoded soccer moms and dramatic preteens.

And the price! I know my coffee is not valued at $4.50 -- I've had much better in Central America for about a tenth of that price. So I must be paying for the ambience -- the cookie cutter ambience and the furniture that was mass-produced for all 16,000 stores in some sweaty factory in Singapore. No thanks -- if I go to get coffee, I'll go someplace that knows its a hole in the wall and prices its products accordingly. Or I'll go to my favorite coffee place of all -- the coffee dispenser at the Chevron station, where there's none of this pretending.

That said, it was rather gratifying to see this in my LA Times this morning -- at last, vindication. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-starbucks2-2008jul02,0,2133970.story