I like coffee in the morning. Actually, that is not quite the truth – I need coffee in the morning. My mind does not function well without a shot of caffeine. I make filter coffee everyday, it is a long time since I have made myself instant coffee. I drink coffee the way it should be drunk; strong, black, and without sugar. (The first two parts of that last statement remind me of the movie Airplane)
However, when I am out there is little chance of finding good filter coffee, so I tend to switch to cappuccino. Obviously, one can’t drink this black, but by asking for an extra shot it can still be a tasty strong drink. I feel certain that California must have passed a law mandating that there must be no where in a built up area that is more than five minutes drive from Starbucks; there are four of them within five minutes of my current home.
One of these Starbucks speaks to the problem of corporate power. It sits on a corner on the main street of the nearby city of Covina. The rest of the shops and restaurants are family owned one of a kind. The whole street is reminiscent of 1950s Main Street USA; some of the shops look as though they have been there for fifty years. There is a picture of the street circa 1950 in one of the street’s restaurants which shows the corner on which Starbucks now sits occupied by a local coffee shop. It seems sad that even on a street on which family places have flourished, the coffee shop fell to the corporate giant.
In the heat of the Southern California summer, many people do not want to drink hot coffee. So Starbucks offers a wider range of chilled drinks than in the UK. My current favourite is green iced tea blended with lemonade. My wife drinks iced Americana (Espresso with water), to which she adds half-and-half and sweetener. If Starbucks add the milk themselves they charge an additional $1.30 by calling it an Iced Latte.
