I've been busy with two exes' traumatic fiftieth birthdays over the last couple of weeks, so I'm sorry I missed yours, Starbucks. 

I have to say it took me a while to warm to you.  But now that we've both crossed the great divide, we've got to stick together.

I still remember my first (and at the time I was pretty sure it'd be my last) Starbucks coffee.  It was back in the summer of '93.  I had followed my grunge muse on an ill-fated foray into the Pacific Northwest and had settled briefly in Portland.


I was living on N.W. Glisan Street, in a basement apartment across from Durst'sThriftway (now a Trader Joe's) in what I still think is one of the best little neighborhoods in America. 

There were tons of cafes, bookshops (Powell's was not far) and thrift stores.  There was a gay sauna down the street.  All the male prostitutes looked like River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves in My Own Private Idaho. 

As for chains. This was back when Torrefazione Italia had a little chain of cafes, and I much preferred their coffee to Starbucks.  Starbucks had that burnt bean flavor — much bolder than anything they sell these days — and I flat-out didn't like it. 

And I didn't go back until they started popping up on every blessed street corner, by which time they'd toned it down (I actually really like their Sumatra, which I regularly get for my home brewer these days).

And while there has been, in the meantime, an awful lot of harumphing over Starbucks dominance of urban America's coffee culture, the truth is, they pretty much singlehandedly rescuscitated it.  Nobody seemed to care when there was a Dunkin — sometimes two and three — on every street corner.  And that's because with Starbucks the issue was not so much coffee as street cred.

The wave of upper class twats that flooded back into safely gentrified urban neighborhoods were too toffy for Dunkin, and then their snotty kids were too alternative for Starbucks.  Which has paved the way for a whole new wave of local chains — from Pavement in the Fenway to Diesel in Davis. 

Diesel is a good example of a local cafe that's gone head-to-head with Starbucks, and is winning.  It is also two doors down from a McDonald's and kitty-corner to a Dunkin.  People who worry that Starbucks is going to squash indie coffeehouses forget one thing: COFFEE IS LIQUID CRACK.  There are more coffeehouses in Davis than there are nail salons in Egleston Square, people.  No worries there.

The truth is, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Starbucks for showing that there was a huge untapped market of people who could be trained to say ridiculous things like "venti one pump caramel one pump white mocha two scoops vanilla bean powder extra ice frappuchino with two shots poured over the top apagotto style with caramel drizzle under and on top of the whipped cream double cupped" in order to get their hit.

The existence of such people, never mind the political ramifications of their existence, had only been wild speculation before Starbucks.  But isn't it better in the end that we know they're out there?  So that we may plan accordingly?

So Happy Birthday Starbucks!  Shall we celebrate with a hot tall skinny upside down with whip caramel macchiato or a triple grande 140 degree no foam cinnamon dolce latte with caramel on the whip?