The laid-back, noncompetitive and bohemian ambience of these new coffee shops has, paradoxically, limited them almost entirely to the very neighborhoods that welcome those qualities: Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and Williamsburg and Park Slope in Brooklyn.
Like flames, paradoxically limited to fires ? More in words and language.
OPEN LETTER
Dear Starbucks,
Hey, is there anywhere to get a decent cup of coffee around here?
Oh, come on. Don't look so sad. When we're in the mood for a twenty-four-ounce cup of pumpkin-pie-flavored Cool Whip, a Feist CD covered in mocha fingerprints, a possibly exaggerated memoir by a former child soldier, and some customer "service" that denies our essential humanity, we still head straight to our corner Starbucks. Or the one across from that one. Or the one that will have opened farther down the block by the time we finish typing this sentence.
Here's the thing, though: We're never, ever in that mood.
What we do like is coffee. If coffee were smack, we'd be Pete Doherty and we'd refuse to give it up, even if it cost us our career and our supermodel girlfriend. And we'll tank up anywhere: the neighborhood joint with the womyn-friendly breast-feeding policy and the couches composed entirely of rusty springs; the swill dispenser down the hall; an AA meeting. Anywhere, that is, but Starbucks.
In this we're not alone. America is a caffeine nation, perpetually jacked up on gallons of magma-hot ****-yeah juice, and logically you guys should still be making more money than Halliburton and Hannah Montana combined. Instead your market share is crumbling, and so is your cultural primacy. Snooty people have moved on to snootier coffee--shade-grown, fair-trade, artisanal, brought down the mountain by mules that have good dental coverage. Everybody else went back to Dunkin' Donuts. You're still part of the fabric of American life--think of Mary-Kate Olsen's ever present Venti cup, proof despite massive evidence to the contrary that she's Just Like Us--but so is soul-crushing corporate suckitude. Your new ads spotlight a straight-down-the-middle brew called Pike Place Roast. We're glad you're getting back into the coffee business--seriously, is there anything you haven't put in a latte yet? Courvoisier? DayQuil? unicorn tears?--but we've tried this stuff, and it should come with an Egg McMuffin on the side. It's a rich, complex blend of desperation and mediocrity.
The real problem is that there used to be something about you, Starbucks, and now there isn't. You were a quintessentially '90s company. You were from Seattle, the same rainy cradle of anticorporate corporateness that gave us Microsoft and major-label grunge. Young dreamers camped out in your stores all day like the cast of Friends, filling napkins with business plans for e-commerce Web sites. ("It's like Pets.com for Wiccans!") We were all going to get crazy rich and wear ironic sexy grandpa T-shirts to offices where we'd play Frisbee golf instead of working. A $4 latte wasn't an extravagance; it was a little rehearsal for the cushy life that was about to be ours. Even your stupid fake-Italian language made us feel sophisticated. The 7-Eleven crowd could have their week-old bubblin' crude; we'd be over here, talking like Marcello Mastroianni, because we knew better. Even back then, you seemed a little evil-empire-ish. But man, your chairs were comfy. So we drank your overpriced espresso-shakes. We drank them up!
...
In other words, you've brought this on yourself. If we learned one thing from The Wire, it's that you can only control all the corner real estate in town and pay disenfranchised young people to sling an addictive product for so long before you lose your grip on the game. But we're not mad at you, Starbucks. Give us a call sometime. We'll grab a coffee. It's on us--we just shorted your stock.
Yours with shaky hands,
GQ Magazine, July 2008
[Via Men/ Style and F-chat]
See also Sant Ambreus Coffee in NY.
It used to be the promoter who was at the forefront.
Over the last three years, it’s very much the bottle hosts
who have become the most prominent person in the club.
-- Jamie Mulholland, an owner of Cain on West 27th Street.
To critics of bottle service, these hosts are further trappings
of a warped system in which the old intricacies of after-hours
chic have been vulgarized down to mere spending power.
For club owners, bottle hosts who bring in business help
them survive in an increasingly competitive industry in
which overhead costs like insurance and rents are climbing,
scrutiny by the city and law enforcement is increasing, and
some clubs are losing revenue as traditional New York
patrons pause in their tracks at the sight of the police
barricades blocking off West 27th Street, known informally
as club row.
Continue reading "Vulgar prestige of bottle services in NY" »
Raw like sushi: Ani Phyo.
santambroeus makes great coffee.
NYC and Southampton, NY.
The writing profession has a yo-yo-diet effect on diet.
“Everybody loses weight on hiatus, and everybody gains
weight during the show. You break up the long day by
getting a little ritualistic snack. It’s like cigarette breaks
used to be.”
“Someone at ‘Friends’ would get a thing of Gummi Bears
and line them up by color before eating them.”
-- Greg Malins, who wrote for “Friends” and “Will and Grace”
and is now a writer and executive producer for “How I Met
Your Mother".
“Our room is obsessed with Tim’s jalapeño chips and
these salt-and-vinegar chips that Greg has flown
in from Canada.
No kidding. Their salt-and-vinegar-ness is, like,
illegal in the States.”
-- Gloria Calderon Kellett, one of Malins’s colleagues.
Fairwaymarket, modest NY grocery.
Coffee map, cups around town.
In its purest form, beer is made solely of malted barley,
water, yeast and hops. Among grains, barley’s association
with brewing comes naturally. Its characteristic hard husk
makes it easier for brewers to employ without clogging up
their equipment, as happens with a grain like wheat, which
has no husk and can gum up the works.
Barley’s high starch content breaks down easily into sugars,
which are then converted by yeast into alcohol. Wheat, by
contrast, with its elastic glutens, is well suited to making
bread; unlike barley, which becomes dry and crumbly in
the hands of a baker. Perfect division of labor, right?
Barley for beer, wheat for bread.
Hefeweizen for hot weather.
Korean bbq place in Flushing, Queens. Recommended.
San Hai Jin Mi
36-24 Union Street,
Flushing, Queens, NY 11354
(on Union just south of Northern Blvd. )
ph 718-539-3274
Great bulgogi and they’re open 24 hours as well though they
are not set up for tourists like the ones on K-town 32nd Street.
Continue reading "Bulgogi Korean BBQ beef in Flushing, Queens" »
Starbucks in Southern Connecticut.
Coffee and WiFi.
Prince Edward Island Mussels
Steamed Mussels with Green Curry and Lemon Grass Cream Sauce
CDN $9.00
'Featuring PEI's only sommelier'
Off Broadway / 42nd Street Lounge
125 Sydney St.
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
(902) 566 - 4620