My Secret, Syrupy Love Affair

Starbucks was breaking cultural and corporate news about fifteen years ago, so it’s ridiculous to think that I can bring anything new to the topic: yes, they’re expensive; yes, they’re everywhere; yes, there’s one inside the Safeway and there’s one outside the Safeway and there’s one across the street; yes, they probably exploit third world workers and the fact that we now have the option of buying fare-trade coffee doesn’t change that; yes, they’re part of mass Americanization and the destruction of diversity and independence via identical brand name identities in every urban centre in the world; and yes, there coffee may not even actually be that good.

Despite all this hemming and hawing, Starbucks persists. It is a warm, aromatic beacon on a cold Vancouver day. We all complain and distain and then go inside anyways, where we secretly judge each other for being there from under our bangs and berets. We order our ridiculously complicated beverages with fake names, and we pay their extortionate prices. And somewhere between the friendly barista and a deep, self-conscious pride at proper ordering lexicon, capped off with a perfect delicious off-menu beverage and maybe a pumpkin-cream cheese muffin and….the love affair is born again, and by god, that muffin is good.

My fascination with the brand is largely fuelled by the fact that I fall into their key demographic: I am young, I am urban, I am image-conscious. I have money to spend and, when I don’t, I have a credit card and parents to fall back on. I like to think of myself as down-to-earth but, deep down inside my malnourished, fake-tanned body, I’m just as pretentious as everybody else. I like the idea of drinking coffee, but actually prefer my vanilla English Breakfast tea misto (extra hot). I like the idea of independent coffee shops, too, but I’m too lazy to walk five blocks to find one, and when I’m there I’m not quite sure how to order, or if I’m cool enough to sit next to that guy with the dreadlocks or the pretty girl with the headband who isn’t wearing any shoes. So instead I return to my corporate god and his mermaid logo: the one closest to my house is open later than most, and there isn’t a single piece of decoration inside of it I wouldn’t gladly mount of my own walls. It’s pretty and it’s comfortable and it plays good music. It’s clean and familiar and still ever-so-slightly-edgy-without-actually-being-edgy (because real edginess involves originality and deviation from the main stream, which is scary and might be rejected and…love me?). It’s the suburb for people who were raised in suburbs and would Never go live in the suburbs, to the tune of corporately produced Indy rock.

I could say that I only drink Starbucks when my family buys me their cards for Christmas and birthdays (plus my family’s in Ontario, so it’s not like they could give me a gift card to anything but a giant corporate brand). I could tell you I buy the fair trade stuff whenever I think about it, and that if there’s an independent coffee shop within a block radius I’ll go there instead and sip hot chocolate, and that actually I’m not from the suburbs – I grew up in the country with Christians and camping and guns. And most of those things I’d be telling you would be mostly true, but: wouldn’t that just be more perception management? Because I’m not pretentious or superior, actually, I’m much better than all those other pretentious and superior people…just like everybody else?

So the cool kids go to independent coffee shops, and the rest of us go to Starbucks. The real coffee lovers order their americanos and roll their eyes at what everyone else is drinking. And the rest of us have a party inside our head when we say all the made up words in the right order in order to get a delicious drink just for us that doesn’t resemble coffee but still tastes damn good. We’re all communists and hippies and Indy-rock posers, sipping at the teat of Corporate America and writing in our blogs about irony.

And dammit, venti, that's okay.