Hold The Lip

The coffeehouse experience is changing. During the 70's and 80's, the coffeehouse was a creative cauldron, overflowing with expressiveness and individuality. In the 90's, "Central Perk" was the coffeehouse epicenter, defining the cup of joe as more than just a morning fix and putting the business that serves it on the map. Television told us that this was not just a place to buy your morning cup, this was a place for, well, Friends. The coffeehouse has always been the place of first jobs for aspiring teenagers and intellectual debates for philosophers. Like the Moleskin, something about coffee caught on among the hip and the creative and hasn't been able to detach itself since.

As we dawned on a new era, the coffeehouse seemed to jump out of the underground scene and into prosperity. Enter: Starbucks, center stage. Now everyone could be a hipster or an artisan without ever needing to wield a pen. Genuinely good coffee mingled with genuinely foreign names, namely those of basic Italian, and everyone simultaneously picked up on the scene.

To make myself clear, I will never ever bash Starbucks's coffee because it's damn good, but the service I could do without. It seems disgruntled teenagers and uptight intellectuals are always manning the counters, and with every cup of coffee you seem to get an overabundance of lip. Like a running commentary of over-the-counter culture, most "baristas" find it necessary to insert their life story into you like a samurai sword. They dribble their emotions into your cup of coffee until you're tempted to simply up and leave, leaving the coffee and the bullshit behind.

And as for the whole creative flow? It's difficult to even have a seat within a coffeehouse now-a-days. The managerial mentality states quite plainly that loitering patrons simply take up space. To prevent any such customers from sticking around and possibly making a mess, the inside of every Starbucks is always somewhere around fifty five degrees, sometimes lower, and if you so much as mention how you're a little chilly, some employee will overhear with their supersonic implants (company provided) and insist on shooting you snide glances for the rest of your stay.

Fun fact: One of the main requirements of all Starbucks employees is the inability to properly spell their customer's names.

Granted, it's not always the employees who make your day a little dimmer. Sometimes it's the patrons themselves that agitate and irritate you. Starbucks customers are probably the worst brand of human beings because they think that a recycled cup and a green logo makes them individuals. Because Starbucks so closely mirrors the old coffeehouse scene of days past, people get sucked into the facade and truly believe that they're somewhere unlike any other. Somewhere where they can just sip their coffee, listen to some music, and get lost in their thoughts.

Or, for business folk, a place where they can noisily make phone calls and bicker to anyone nearby about how their last deal fell through.

Or where overworked mothers can bring their children to dig through the discount mug bin while they detox on the couch.

Or where public-schooled teenagers can prattle about the newest episode of I Love New York and make a general racket.

I feel like a seventy year old woman with such discontent for the peace and quiet of days past, but sometimes all you really need is a nice hushed spot to collect yourself. Or to write. Or to sketch. And considering the fact that it's eroded away the previous public spots where us hermit folk could do such things, one would think that Starschmucks would at least have the courtesy to provide that kind of intimacy. Or at least free WiFi.

The pretty picture is pretty much gone.