Saturday, January 31, 2009

Keep it real

"F*cking espresso, Cappuccino, we invented this shit. . . now all these c*cks*ckers are making money on it . . . It's not just the money, it's a pride thing. . . This? this is the worst, this espresso shit."

-Pauly Walnuts-


So we're sitting at this rustic, open air coffee shop in Port Salerno, looking over the Manatee pocket and the old fishing docks where slick yachts, beat up trawlers, catamarans and open fishing boats are moored. The building is a collection of old fish houses that went bust years ago when commercial net fishing was outlawed in the area. A glass blower rents a corner and a potter, and there is a gallery and some workshops -- and a coffee house that's a great place to enjoy the view, the breeze, the sounds of a harbor; maybe have a cup of coffee, eat a home made cookie, play some checkers in the shade and watch the boats come and go. It's the kind of American ambiance that attracted me to the coast and to this part of Florida; an island in the river of change; a river that's ever rushing toward commercial strip mall plastic mass produced national franchise sameness. Panama hat and Ray-Bans, flowered shirt and deck shoes; you feel afloat in the serenity, you're part of the scenery. You remember why this feels like home rather than an address.

So when a young dude dressed in Urban Black sidles up to the counter and asks, without apparent embarrassment, for an "Americano" with soy and demerara sugar, I could feel the air turn stiff and brittle as a plastic strip mall sign.

Am I wrong to single out Starbucks as a singular agent of phoniness in America? Rightly or wrongly I do just that. Of course you can't cheat an honest man and you probably can't make a pretentious ass of him either. It was all here, that sense of provincial inferiority that makes people who've never been near Europe feel good about paying more for a 20 ounce coffee by calling it a Venti even though in Italy and the rest of Europe they don't use ounces. Perhaps we could solve the problems of General Motors by having them sell Voitures because for all our narcissistic nationalism, Americans hate being Americans -- or so it seems at Starbucks.

No matter how you feel about Starbucks, I had to smile at the planned closing of 600 locations in July and the additional 300 announced this last week. Perhaps now, that piece of untouched Florida wilderness still remaining where Bridge Road crosses US1, Starbucks has been trying to get a zoning variance on will remain the home of Sand Hill Cranes and alligators and not be replaced by "baristas" (baristi in real Italian) serving up overpriced, oversized plastic buckets of Italian breakfast coffee to pretentious lunchtime provincials.

Trying to open a Starbucks in the real Italy, where people want a glass of Vino Bianco with lunch and the salad comes after the main course and no two coffee shops are the same, would be as difficult as opening a ChopSuey joint in Shanghai. To the locals, as it is with Pauly Walnuts, our phony expropriation of their culture is just that: phony.



Truth be told, I find the coffee in Vienna - and the pastry that goes with it - far better and a morning "bica" at some hole in the wall shop in some Portuguese fishing village is incomparable. It's also not separable from the matrix. I do love espresso and I do love a plain ordinary cup of drip coffee from one of those Bunn coffeemakers you see in every diner on our continent. It's authentic, it fits, it's real and as American as red checked table cloths and waitresses named Flo.

So they've stolen one more piece of America from me. Oh sure, I can still go to Dunkin' Donuts or a Waffle house and get served a cup of coffee by a waitress and a damned good doughnut too and I don't have to feel like a jackass with pretend Italian nomenclature either. You can't see the water from there though.

11 comments:

  1. I rarely go to Starbucks -- only if I'm traveling, which is once or twice a year. Best coffee I've ever had is the morning cup I make with freshly ground beans and a simple Chemex coffee beaker with the appropriate filter (thicker than the ordinary ones so there's no sediment). You just boil a cup of water, let it cool to just below boiling, and pour it slowly in a circle over the grounds. If the coffee is really fresh and the water is hot enough, you can see the thick foam at the top of your coffee while it brews. Even a dinosaur appreciates a good strong cup of coffee in the morning!

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  2. Starbucks is shit! I make my own cappuchino every morning. What I really miss, though is the thick syrupy turkish coffee served in Eastern Europe. Sitting in a kaverna with a cup of that coffee and a decadent pastry - priceless!

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  3. This old man needs a cup to keep from turning into a tyrannosaur. Yes, Turkish coffee is a trip, even if not what the doctor recommends.

    I enjoy grinding beans in my little Zassenhausen hand grinder - ritual means a lot even though I'll drink anything in the morning if need be.

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  4. Octo is so irrepressibly impatient, he grinds coffee beans with his beak. At other times, he uses a French press – an 8 cup size which lasts about an hour. Octo has been known to get speeding tickets even when parked, and his life ambition is to amount to a hill of beans. His favorite blends are French Roast, Italian Roast, Costa Rica, and Espresso. According to Octo, bad coffee is grounds for divorce. In France, he says: Un cafĂ© noir, si’l vous plait. In America, CPR means, "Coffee Provides Resuscitation."

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  5. I love this post - on many levels, Fogg. I too will drink any form of coffee in the morning if need be but otherwise grind my own beans every morning. I refuse to do a thing before my first few sips - my child learned long ago not to expect anything from mom - not even juice - before she has made coffee.

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  6. I do love my coffee! But for some reason Starbucks seems so not my kind of place.

    I have two Starbucks gift certifciates: a $25 gift certificate, which is over 2 years old and now I have a $100 gift certificate. As of today I still have $118 to redeem.

    I am working my way to a French Press (I really want to try that one) but for now I am content with my electric perculator....it gets coffee just right!

    I favor the dark blends....to me it is just not the flavor but the aroma also....its got to match.

    We don't have Dunkin Donuts here but their coffee is good!

    Best cup of coffee I have ever had? Hmm...probably at the Fishtail Lodge in Pokhara Nepal....never bothered to ask what they made the coffee with.

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  7. So there are the coffee aficionadoes and then there are those who drink Starbucks. Really. People whose tastebuds have been destroyed by years of drinking Coke have no idea that what they're drinking is not nectar. Let people have their coffee as they like without getting all elitist.

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  8. Well, as Marie Antoinette once said, "Let them drink coffee." (For some reason, that "cake" remark she also made gets much more play....)

    Enough denunciations of elitism, even about such high culture things as coffee!

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  9. God I feel like a step child here. I'm on my fourth cup of Folgers. I shake my head when driving by Starbucks cause I can get a twelve of Rolling Rock for the price of two cappacinos.
    I won't hold the coffee snobbism against you guys if you don't hold my love of flannel shirts against me. Thank you for allowing me to post here.

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  10. Truth, I think the real snobs are the Starbucks crowd that must present themselves at the counter and bark out a dizzying array of "coffee speak" just to order something I brew every morning.
    A nearby mall has a Starbucks kiosk and a little coffee shop. We once got coffee from the Starbucks and it was horrible! But I always get a perfect cup of joe from the other place.
    Starbucks is vastly overrated. I'd sit down and have a cup of Folgers with you anytime! (Even if you served it up while wearing your flannel shirt)! :)

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  11. "the Starbucks crowd that must present themselves at the counter and bark out a dizzying array of "coffee speak"

    That's exactly what I was trying to say in the first place. Americans are very found of trying to one up others by using jargon they create for the purpose. And of course the rest of us seem to adopt the nonsense words as though they have always been there and actually meant something. Things go straight from the Starbucks board room to Merriam Websters.

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