Starbucks coffee has a burnt taste and it’s not just me. A lot of my
friends agree. Yet we go there.

I go to Starbucks (or an imitator) after tennis. To read the paper. For
a snack (or for the coffee — yes, I drink it). For meetings. To be
with people. To be alone.

I go there with my laptop to write; it’s a great anonymous place, and
you know they won’t kick you out or bug you for your table. It offers
wi-fi too, so I can fall victim yet again to e-mail, The Great
Distractor. My publisher, Patrick Grace, goes there to edit new books.
My daughter, Shawn Goldstein, practically lives there. If you’re oot and
aboot, Starbucks is usually the best place to pee — even in Manhattan,
the hardest place in America to take a leak. (Except skip the Starbucks
at 53rd and Harper in Chicago, which doesn’t have a bathroom.)

Fact is, Starbucks is not about the coffee. It (and its imitators) have
changed our lives. They offer us a gathering-place for the new era, a
safe and friendly Town Square, with overpriced coffee (but economists
call this an “affordable luxury”), Frappuccinos, low-fat baked goods and
other quasi-healthy fare (at least around here — we stopped in a
Starbucks in Milwaukee and there was nothing even comparable).
And The New York Times, God bless ‘em.

And no booze. Bars, which we had to bump along with until Starbucks and
its imitators came along, are principally places to drink. Social
discourse occurs, to be sure, but you know. Not the same.

I could go on about how Starbucks is a countervailing force to the
atomization of our culture, and I will a bit. We’re all cocooning in our
little niches these days, busy on our cell phones, isolated with our iPods,
wasting hours each night catching up with our favorite websites or
watching Channel 1,943. I’ve done my bit to help this trend along,
earning my living creating and marketing niche business-to-business
news to business-to-business niche audiences. Starbucks or anything
that brings us together to communicate face to face … or even be silent
in the presence of other 98.6-degree organisms … is a good thing.

So here’s to you, Starbucks, for changing the culture in a good way. I
lift my grande half-decaf leave-some-room-for-cream to you and other new
jewels of the American corporati, including, in no particular order:

– Barnes & Noble (more about this one in a coming e-mail)

– Stores you like to shop in even when you don’t need anything,
including Home Depot and Costco (and my wife Carol would add Target)

– Netflix (Watch what you want, when you want, keep it as long as you
want. Isolating, sure, but what the hey — I’m part of the culture too.)

– XM Satellite Radio (Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for
free? Because the cow stopped giving milk; all the cow gives now is
commercials. My pal, new-media guru Gary Arlen, thinks Clear Channel
Broadcasting and its greed singlehandedly killed broadcast radio, thus
paving the way for XM. Tune in “Fine Tuning” [XM Channel 76] and
rediscover radio as it was meant to be.)

– Trader Joe’s (to die for) and Wegman’s (to die in)

And, because it wouldn’t be fair to list good companies without also
listing those that suck:

– Verizon
– Blockbuster
– Comcast
– Comcast
– Comcast

Which companies do YOU think have changed the culture for the better
in some small way? Which do YOU think suck? Let me know and I’ll post
the best answers (i.e., the ones I agree with). Rules: Must not be local
companies, and those that suck must have PERSONALLY dissed you,
broke a promise, let you down, or otherwise stuck a metaphorical finger
in your eye.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. LEONARD LOPATE! Friday, Sept. 29, noon-2 p.m., WNYC-AM and -FM, New
York City. WNYC’s signal blankets the tri-state New York metropolitan area.
I’ll be on for 20 minutes, somewhere in that two-hour time block. Don’t know
exactly when, so listen to the whole show already.

AND … if you read and loved To Love Mercy, please nominate it for The
Quills Award. From the website description:

“The Quills, an initiative launched by Borders Books & Music with the
support of Reed Business Information and NBC, is an industry-qualified
“consumers choice” awards program for books. The Quills celebrates the
best adult and children’s books of the year in 20 popular categories,
including Book of the Year, plus an committee-selected award for best
Book to Film.”

Anyone can nominate anything. Visit www.thequills.org. Do it today, as they say.