"One man brought in his own box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, a carton of milk and some Entenmann’s mini crumb cakes before passing out face down on a table."

"Afterward, he rolled spliffs as nearby, paying customers tried to enjoy their lattes and Frappuccinos. A mentally disturbed man in a black trench coat talked to himself and screamed obscenities at the communal mirror near the bathrooms for 30 minutes. 'There’s a guy over by the bathrooms making people really uncomfortable,' one customer told an employee behind the counter."

From "'Woke' NYC Starbucks now a haven for junkies, drunks and homeless" (NY Post).

"Like so much of the world right now, the Starbucks business as it is built today is not set up to fully satisfy the evolving behaviors, needs and expectations of our partners or customers."

Said Howard Schultz, quoted in "Starbucks Closing Some Stores, Citing Safety Concerns in Certain Cafes/Coffee chain said it is permanently closing 16 cafes after workers reported drug use by members of the public and crime concerns" (WSJ).

Starbucks said it would permanently close six stores each in the Seattle and Los Angeles areas, two in Portland, Ore., and single locations in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. by the end of the month

"Former CEO Kevin Johnson acknowledged that dairy products are Starbucks’s largest source of carbon dioxide emissions and that switching to plant milk is 'a big part of the solution.'"

"Yet despite knowing that cow’s milk is responsible for three times the emissions of plant milks, the corporation still slaps an undue fee of up to 80 cents on eco-friendly choices. If you’re thinking the company is merely passing on its additional cost to the consumer, think again. According to PETA’s research, it costs Starbucks a few pennies extra to use vegan milk in a drink — but it charges you 10 times the cost or more. To me, the reasoning is obvious. About 40 percent of U.S. adults now purchase nondairy milk (mostly almond), oat milk sales shot up 95 percent in the 52-week period ending in early September, and around half of Gen Zers say they’re dropping dairy. Making conscientious people pay more is profitable. But for any company with the reach and resources of Starbucks to profiteer in the face of a global calamity … well, it brings to mind the greedy Gordon Gekko....  ...Starbucks says it wants 'to inspire and nurture the human spirit.'... End the vegan upcharge."

From "I glued my hand to a Starbucks counter. Here’s why" by James Cromwell (WaPo). 

Here's my May 11th post about the protest. As I said there, I think Starbucks should redo the prices so that drinks with cow's milk and vegetarian milk substitutes are the same price. I would not have known about this issue if it had not been for Cromwell's glued-hand protest, but I do still disapprove of that kind of behavior. There are worse protests, but I think Cromwell, et al., can do better. I note that he didn't explain the connection between glue — or hands — and his cause, so there's nothing especially significant about glued hands.

"Superglue"? Really? I'd use Elmer's Glue.

I'm seeing this in The Washington Post: "Incensed by the 'senseless upcharge' at Starbucks for nondairy milk, 'Succession' and 'Babe' actor James Cromwell and other members of PETA, where he serves as an honorary director, staged a protest Tuesday at a Midtown Manhattan location of the coffee chain.... As he reads his statement, the masked baristas behind him generally appear to continue working as if there isn’t a 6-foot-7 Oscar-nominated actor attached to the counter — and later they continue to as he leads the other protesters in chanting, 'Save the planet, save the cows. Stop this vegan upcharge now.' Eventually, the police arrive and tell customers the Starbucks is closed — though they can still pick up any outstanding orders. Cromwell and the other glued protester detach their hands from the counter and leave." 

I assume the vegan milks are more expensive than cow's milk, but Starbucks could average it out and adjust all the prices and thereby avoid giving people a money reason to choose cow's milk.

But I want to question whether it was "superglue."

"I felt smug afterwards, but I am, also, sincerely a juice person. Also milk. I will go to a restaurant and order a glass of milk."

"People look at me like I’m a lunatic. On planes, I’ll order a Virgin Mary — not because I’m a teetotaler, just because I’m in it for the tomato juice — followed by an orange juice, followed by a glass of milk.... Late in the afternoon, I ate 'sous vide egg bites' from Starbucks, which are these sad low-carb food-like egg disks that say 'I’m not eating bread, but in every other way I have given up.'... On this morning, I was scheduled to appear on Good Morning America to discuss my foreign-policy book, so it was up at 4 a.m. local time to make a Nespresso and Zoom with George Stephanopoulos, who looked perkier than I did, as is his wont. So did the phalanx of six-packed hotties next to whom I lumbered through leg day at the gym shortly thereafter. Time for another ham sandwich and green juice." 

It's the unmistakable voice of — can't you tell? — Ronan Farrow, in "Ronan Farrow Wants to Order a Side of Lox 'They’ll be like, "That’s not a thing. What does that mean?"'" (New York Magazine).

Before now, no one in the history of the world had ever said "phalanx of six-packed hotties next to whom I lumbered." I didn't even know you were allowed to call random strangers "hotties" anymore. But "phalanx of six-packed hotties next to whom I lumbered" — that's mad. And there it is with "sous vide egg bites," "sincerely a juice person," and George Stephanopoulos! 

It's all so alien. I never get anywhere near George Stephanopoulos!

To be fair, it does sound delicious.

On todays episode of why i wanna quit my job. pic.twitter.com/vKAtRKNRwe

— Josie (@ProjectJosiee) May 2, 2021

"The Trump faithful also accused us of trying to get rich on our Never Trump status. Yes, the founders of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project are now taking in lots of donations..."

"... but that was after burning personal and financial bridges to the Republican Party that sustained them and built their handsome homes over the years. (For the record, I have received zero compensation for my association with the Lincoln Project, but I hope the owners of the organization get plenty rich. They’ve earned it.) For most of us, media appearances came only with a ride to the studio and free coffee. (At 30 Rock in New York, at least it was Starbucks.)... If we’d been in it for our own enrichment, we’d have made the smart play and signed on with Trump, because that’s where the money was right from the start.... Now that it looks like Trump is headed for defeat, some Republicans feel safe to criticize him again. But courage exercised only when the coast is clear is not courage; it is opportunism...." 

From "My Never Trump Elegy/Courage exercised only when the coast is clear is not courage; it is opportunism" by  Tom Nichols (The Atlantic).

How is it that NYC is supposed to be the greatest city in the world, but people there say "at least it was Starbucks"? In Madison, you'd never say that. It would be more like "The other cafés were closed so I was stuck going to Starbucks. Sorry. Had to do it...."

As for the Never Trumpers... did they do it for their own self-interest? 

A restaurant and a café are trying to be open on State Street — despite boarded up windows and with the help of some slap-dash painting.

Photographed by me yesterday...



Look closely — it cries: WE'RE OPEN...



The word "PEACE" is right next to a fist...

I don't know. Is that for some new drink?

I'm just trying to read "The Shady History of Mayor Pete’s Wine Cave—and the Ultra-Rich Couple That Owns It" at The Daily Beast and noticing a question posed in the sidebar: "Why Does Starbucks Melt Conservative Brains?"

I'm thinking they're concocting one of their flavors to squirt into coffee. Who wants caramel or toffee nut when you can have melted conservative brain? How many pumps?

The article is actually about the supposed phenomenon of "right-wingers... falling for hoaxes." It contains this embedded tweet, which I don't find to be an effective critique of right-wingers:

Brian Kilmeade: "Maybe there's an anti-law enforcement credo that's going through [Starbucks] ... Racial sensitivity training, what about law enforcement sensitivity training?" pic.twitter.com/xbHB4seaDt

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) December 17, 2019

The real phenomenon here is: Articles must be written. Headlines must be clickable. Anger is the caffeine of the internet. The pot must be stirred. The frappaccino must be blended... and God knows what's in there — melted conservative brain, melted left-wing brain, melted everything.

That's how it looks from my outpost on the internet, where I don't get angry, and I don't melt. I'm blending my own frappuccino... with 3 pumps of cruel neutrality.

ADDED: So what's "shady" about the people who own the now-famous "wine cave"? The subheadline is "$100,000 checks, plum ambassadorships, and a $102 million settlement. The cave has been an oasis for dollar-eyed Dems long before Elizabeth Warren made it instantly infamous."

Dollar-eyed Dems — I guess those are the Democrats who are less left-wing than Elizabeth Warren. But candidates have to raise funds. Why trash a candidate for his ability to raise money? The Democrats are going to need a lot of money for the 2020 elections. Why would anyone who wants Democrats to win make fund raising into something dirty?

"I’d like to say that he is absolutely a pig and I’d like to thank the brave men and women from Starbucks for their service..."

"He was blatantly, proudly racist when I was a kid.... Said things I would never repeat. He treats women like dogs, including his own daughter.... The deputy [who actually got the cups marked 'PIG']  told my mom he didn’t really care and that it was a harmless joke, no big deal... but my father is a camera whore who couldn’t resist the attention.... update: he has seen it and had someone call my mom to ‘get that s–t off twitter’ lmao he is upset."

Tweeted @MissOMara, quoted in "Daughter of police chief in Starbucks cup scandal says he’s ‘absolutely a pig’" (NY Post).

Kiefer Police Chief Johnny O’Mara says one of his officers picked up five cups of coffee today at the Glenpool @Starbucks for his dispatchers, as a thank you for working on Thanksgiving.

“PIG” was printed on all five labels, he says. @NewsOn6 pic.twitter.com/tmEwid8JRc

— Amy Slanchik (@amyslanchik) November 28, 2019

The things that went wrong on TV last night were better than anything that went right.

There was a Starbucks cup of coffee on "Game of Thrones":



I don't give a damn about "Game of Thrones," and I don't even want to hear about why I should. But I do like the screwup of including a Starbucks cup.

Meanwhile, over on "American Idol" — which I do watch, and I don't need to hear about why I shouldn't — Katy Perry picked her butt:

When you forget your on live TV! 😂

You get that wedgie girl 😂💖 @katyperry @AmericanIdol
pic.twitter.com/Do3YaeACjt

— CAITLIN (@KCCAITLIN_) May 6, 2019

They eliminated my favorite contestant, Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon. The voters didn't want him, and the judges — faced with two losers and with only one "save" to give — chose the other loser. It was obvious her performances were worse, but to save the boy and send home the girl and leave a final 5 with 4 males and only one female was apparently intolerable. And I think the show's effort to portray Jeremiah as rejected by his conservative parents because he's gay kind of backfired. His parents weren't public figures who deserved public scorn even if they were awful, but they were a lot nicer to him than the show wanted to make it look, as Jeremiah himself pointed out back when he was soaring in the competition (in early April):

What's a Starbucks barista to do if a customer wants to talk about Howard Schultz?

It was only yesterday:

And today I'm seeing, "Here’s What Starbucks Is Telling Employees To Say About Howard Schultz/The coffee chain’s weekly memo discusses how to defuse the situation should someone share 'aggressive political opinions'" (HuffPo). Someone? Like Meade?

If a customer attempts to investigate, or share aggressive political opinions, attempt to diffuse the situation by sharing:

We respect everyone’s opinion. Our goal is simply to create a warm and welcoming space where we can all gather, as a community, over great coffee.

Meade at Starbucks: "I just want to say that I support your boss, Howard Schultz. Because I hate the Democrats, and I hate the Republicans, so go Howard."

Barista (leaning in, smiling, a little bit conspiratorially): "I agree."

"If you're kind of scrounging around, you're looking for something to eat on Thanksgiving, check out Starbucks."

"They really have a pretty decent Thanksgiving sandwich there to check out."

The art of the Starbucks cup.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Soo Min Kim / 김수민 / 金秀敏 (@fseo) on Oct 14, 2018 at 7:35pm PDT

Lots more like that...

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Soo Min Kim / 김수민 / 金秀敏 (@fseo) on Nov 18, 2018 at 11:11pm PST

... at the Instagram account of Soo Min Kim.

Starbucks in Japan

So inspiring! Beautiful!

Meanwhile, in the United States, Starbucks struggles to blend in. Via Reddit:

Starbucks on Monday emphasized in communications with The Wall Street Journal that employees have detailed instructions on what to do if someone is behaving in a disruptive manner. It said disruptive behaviors include smoking, drug or alcohol use, improper use of restrooms and sleeping.

The company's latest message shows the challenges companies face when they address socially sensitive policies in an era of social media when every corporate move can be immediately telegraphed. Some people tweeted and posted supportive comments about Starbucks's policy of inclusiveness, demonstrating the tightrope the company must walk in trying to cater to all customers....

Managers and baristas, Starbucks said, should first ask a fellow employee to verify that a certain behavior is disruptive and if it is, respectfully request that the customer stop. Starbucks says employees only should call 911 if a situation becomes unsafe.

Other examples of disruptive behavior include talking too loud, playing loud music and viewing inappropriate content. The company provided employees with examples of when they should call 911, which includes when a customer is using or selling drugs.

I can only gesture at the question whether differences between Japanese and American culture account for the differences in handling these 2 problems of one corporation interfacing with a culture. It is easier to blend in architecturally than socially and politically. Architecturally, you know what to look at: the surrounding buildings. You can observe concrete elements and attempt to copy them. But socially and politically, what do you do? You've been criticized in a sudden spate and you're suddenly sticking out because one incident hit media virally. Any solution brings new problems, leading to new incidents and, perhaps, the silent draining away of your old patrons.

Apparently, it's right-wing to find the "Hotep Jesus" Starbucks reparations video hilarious.

I had no idea that I was evincing right-wingery by laughing, but now I am learning, reading "Right-Wing Media Promote An Anti-Semitic Extremist To Mock Starbucks Controversy" (at Right Wing Watch).

I thought it was kind of a Saul Alinsky/Yippie move, but I guess nothing is supposed to be funny anymore. Oh, yeah, I'm remembering I have a tag for these times — the Era of That's Not Funny.

Here's the original video — high-level comedy:

Starbucks is racist https://t.co/fPf3ERMlXX

— Hotep Jesus 🧠 (@VibeHi) April 15, 2018

Brilliant! So much to talk about. It's really a Borat-style stunt. I assume the barista isn't playing a role but spontaneously responding to Hotep Jesus's demand for "reparations" and embodying all the empathy she's learned to show, even as she's videoed doing something that must be a firing offense, handing out free coffee.

Yes, there is something wrong with making light of reparations, but that's what makes it funny. It's transgressive. I'll group this with the story of Randa Jarrar, who extracted dark humor from the death of Barbara Bush. Oh, no! Death is super-serious. Don't laugh at death!

These are the very things we should be laughing about — death, racism — not because they aren't serious but because they are.

Help me, Randa.

The WaPo columnist and the WaPo commenters talk about the Starbucks incident in completely different ways.

The columnist, Karen Attiah, uses the incident as a jumping off point for challenging, big ideas:

What the Starbucks incident has in common with the lynchings of the past — as well as the police brutality and mass incarceration of the present — is the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time, in any place, for little reason — whether that means being kicked out of stores, suspended from school, priced out of their neighborhoods, locked up in jail or put in the grave....

Starbucks will do what it needs to do to protect its brand. But what is America doing to protect its own citizens of color?... And how can we up the social and legal costs for people who make life-threatening decisions by calling the police on peaceful black people?

There are over 900 comments, and I haven't read them all, but I have put them in the order of "most liked" and read a lot of them, and nobody seems even to acknowledge Attiah's idea. They're all back at the original Starbucks incident, picking into the merits of whether people can sit in the café without ordering anything. One of the most-liked comments is:

Oh my lord, give me a break already. Nobody has a right to plant themselves in a private establishment without even paying for a cup of coffee. The managers character has been unfairly denigrated, and by extension every Starbucks employee, and the cowardly response of ceo is to virtue signal. Want to hang around? Buy a bloody muffin. Stop blaming others for consequences of your actions.

The most-liked item responds to that:

For everyone flogging the “you don’t have the right to loiter” line, STARBUCKS says we do and these guys did. Starbucks says they routinely allow - even encourage - people to hang out at their stores. It’s part of their brand.

So STARBUCKS says these guys did nothing wrong and the manager inappropriately called the police. Why are you people so invested in blaming the black guys when the establishment whose side you’re taking IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE??

And the comments go on and on over this debate. I haven't encountered anyone dealing with what Attiah called "the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time" — that there's an insidious, pervasive system encompassing everything from murder to expensive real estate.

I reordered the comments to put the newest one first, and I did get something addressing Attiah's big reach. Somebody called all-comments-matter quotes Attiah's "What the Starbucks incident has in common with the lynchings of the past" for the purpose of decisively rejecting it:

Think rationally for a moment about the 2 things that Attiah is attempting to connect on some equivalent level...and tell me, honestly with a straight face, that you can take this seriously.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge orders Starbucks to put a cancer warning on its coffee because of a chemical — acrylamide — produced in the roasting process.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle wrote, "Defendants did not offer substantial evidence to quantify any minimum amount of acrylamide in coffee that might be necessary to reduce microbiological contamination or render coffee palatable... Rather, Defendants argued that acrylamide levels in coffee cannot be reduced at all without negatively affecting safety and palatability.”

Courthouse News Service reports.

According to court documents, defendants did not dispute that acrylamide was a byproduct of the roasting process, but Judge Berle concluded they failed to meet their burden of proof that acrylamide was at “no significant risk level.”...

[California’s Proposition 65 under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act] allows an express exemption from liability for naturally occurring chemicals found in food, but those exemptions do not apply to carcinogens that form during the cooking process. The fact that defendants did not add the carcinogen was not enough of a defense, according to the court.

Apparently, you're also getting acrylamide in "potato chips, French fries and some forms of bread."

Defendants’ experts provided risk assessments of the carcinogen, but they did not consider what effect it has when found in coffee. And a report from a laboratory on acrylamide provided evidence that was “unreliable and inadmissible because the analytical chemistry method” was novel and used techniques that were not accepted in the scientific community, according to the court.

Warnings on everything — remember when that was a comic meme?

I don't know when this happened...



... but here's Cracked in 2009 when the comic idea was quite stale, "If Everything In Life Came With Warning Labels" — including a woman's ass with a warning label and a warning label that has a warning label that has a warning label that, etc....



IN THE COMMENTS: Beach Brutus said:

Seems like the burden of proof is inverted here. The State says you have to post a warning unless you prove the dosage is too small to be harmful. If the State wants to compel speech it should bear the burden of proving the product dosage is too high.

Mark said...

Then, of course, South Park beat us to it decades ago with its warning label before every episode cautioning viewers how offensive it is and should not be viewed by anyone at all.

I said, "I'll bet Mad Magazine did it in the 60s" and then remembered a cover from from 1962 (when Mad, which I'd discovered on my own at a news stand, was a stunning revelation to me (it shaped the whole course of my life)):

"Why are you giving such coverage to a traitor who divulged secret military documents? As a retired military officer, I am outraged he was even pardoned."

The top-rated comment at The New York Times for "The Long, Lonely Road of Chelsea Manning/Her disclosure of classified documents in 2010 ushered in the age of leaks. Now, freed from prison, she talks about why she did it — and the isolation that followed."

Second highest-rated:

Manning still doesn't seem to have the slightest clue as to the impact of her stealing of this classified material. When she's drinking her Starbucks,* does she ever think about the Afghan villagers, for example, whose life she put in danger by her disclosures? Yet we're supposed to feel sorry for her for her time in prison.

Third:

Chelsea Manning was a traitor to the United States. It's not just that she leaked classified documents by the hundreds of thousands. It was that she was totally indiscriminate in doing so, taking no care to redact names to protect people's lives, and including tens of thousands of State Department documents which had nothing to do with the Iraq War but simply because she happened to get her hands on them. (That said, as a former Foreign Service Officer, I think the documents put what the State Department does in a pretty good light for the public, even if their release did cause us some problems.)

She was rightfully sentenced to a very long jail term, then pardoned by Barrack Obama in his 11th hour exit which, alas, was hardly less dignified by this pardon than Bill Clinton's pardon of a couple high-contributor convicted felons (Mark Rich comes to mind).

I saw a TV interview with her. And its ALL ABOUT ME: first Chelsea's private moral code which led to her betrayal of our country. And then, asking that the US taxpayers while she was in jail pay to help her change sexual identity from boy to girl. Fine if she wishes that, but not on my nickel, thank you.

That we coddle and pardon such a person is a true signal of moral collapse and a refusal to set a standard (and yes, standards are tough) that members of our society obey if they are to be true to each other.

She may be free from jail, but hopefully she will never be free of the social stigma of her deed.

And fourth, the kicker:

Glad the New York Times was not around 250 years ago, or you would be braying about "Benedict Arnold: Misunderstood Patriot."

______________________

* The article does in fact begin with Manning going to Starbucks. The chosen drink is, we're told, a white-chocolate mocha.