One student gave an oral report on Starbucks. Apparently, the founder of Starbucks was going through some sort of life crisis a while back. He felt that Starbucks had lost its way. He had wanted he said to import the coffee house culture he had found in Europe, especially Italy, into the USA. Starbucks was to be an alternative place, a “third place” he called it, where people could hang out other than home or work.
I think there are about 6000 Starbucks world wide, and of course, now they look pretty much alike. The founder was upset because when you went into one, since they had put in those new automated espresso makers, you couldn’t even smell the coffee anymore. How the hell was a person to create a coffee house culture without the smell of coffee? He shook up his investors for a while with this Hamletian torments, and then reassured everybody by saying he is going to have more Starbucks than MacDonald’s world wide. He is aiming, I do believe, for 20,000 outlets.
The student giving the oral report when she is home hangs out in an “actual” coffee house. She had pictures of it. It looked warm and inviting. The chairs she said did not match (a sure sign of a real coffee house) and they had one of those Italian coffee makers that has a big handle to pull down when you make the coffee, and all sorts of steam and other stuff shoots out. She said that really she liked this old fashioned coffee house better than Starbucks.
Then another student, perhaps sensing a “criticism” of Starbucks, said something like he didn’t understand the problem since Starbucks was doing what Starbucks was supposed to be doing, which was looking like Starbucks and serving up Starbucks coffee. Like what else could a Starbucks be but a Starbucks?
I wonder if this is what Marcuse meant with his one-dimensional man, not the inability to be critical (god forbid) but the inability even to detach one’s self sufficiently from what is to begin to feel things might be other than they are or once were.
The founder of Starbucks must know that coffee house culture grew out of and was rooted in the long history of neighborhoods. If they were all “unique” or “special” in some way that’s because there were neighborhoods, urban neighborhoods, with people all packed on top of each other and bumping into each other down at the coffee house. But neighborhoods are dead and dying what with the creation of suburbia. In recognition of this fact, Starbucks now has drive-thru’s.
How can a coffee house be a coffee house if you don’t even have to go inside?
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Above--Will's Coffee House--where Alexander Pope and other wits used to hang out.