I don’t like Starbucks. It’s one of those metastatic businesses that eat up everything in their way. We even have them in the Village which once used to have coffee houses, owned by individuals, where we could sit with friends and commune for hours.
Starbucks drove them out of business. Starbucks can afford paying $20,000 a month in rent for a small storefront. A one-guy coffee house can’t.
And Starbucks’ CEO has made some political pronouncements that border on the self-aggrandizing, simplistic, conscientiously dim-witted “libertarianism” propounded by the Koch Bros, et too many al.
I don’t like Starbucks, I don’t go to Starbucks, so I’m pleased to advise you of this lawsuit story that appeared in the NYT: Suit Accuses New York Starbucks of Discriminating Against Deaf Patrons – NYTimes.com.
Oh, and the piece starts this way:
The Starbucks coffee shop on Astor Place is an airy, communal retreat where the regulars huddle with their laptops, reconnect with friends and exchange water-cooler gossip over foam lattes.
That location isn’t “airy,” and never was, even when it was occupied by another coffee house/restaurant: it is dark, dankish and utterly uninviting.