Invasion of the Starbuck Rogers
I knew it was a mistake. The new coat of paint and plush chairs. The use of mood music instead of worn out old favorites.
Today I went into my old coffee shop, the one safely tucked away from the world in this dank sub-basement that existed forever in the old metro area crammed with art house rules. I found it as a wee lad, about 16, when I used to run away from the suburban nightmare to the bright lights of the big city. People were cool in that intellectually hip sort of way sipping their European named drinks. The patrons all read books by the likes of Kafka and Dostoevsky. They were poor college students, the literary chic, the poetic hack and the infinite pothead losers intermingled at just the right proportion.
Today it sunk in. The place had changed.
I visited a couple of times since my infamous move back to the land where I grew up. (I will write another installment of about me soon, I promise) At first the shop was familiar. It reminded me of summers with friends after we were away from each other for months while attending college. It reminded me of my escape from high school hell. It reminded me of rainy days the way the pregnant hippy chick did at the other place. But then I started listening to the music. I started looking at the people. The place somewhat gentrified. There were grumbles from long time veterans of kick ass shop lattes before Starbucks made lattes cool in the bad yuppie since of the word. The 50 year old plus conservative men in pullover cardigan with their Oprah-book-club of the month wives were in tow began invading. Little Christians even discussed the Bible, not in an intellectual exploratory way, but more in the "Baby Jesus saves" sort of way in one of the new couches.
Perhaps the light of the place faded before I moved back, but it was not until today, until I saw the change in paint did it sink in. All the cool, hip, wow art galleries, tattoo parlors, and studios that so freely reigned when I was younger finally brought about their own demise, and that of the coffee shop. Those artsy folk cleaned up the area just enough for rich, conservative America to amble out of their burrows and into the bad neighborhoods. You know, the neighborhoods where the drug addicts, the whores, and those people once lived. It was done through a steady increase in commerce and the raising of the rent I am sure. It allowed the Starbuck Rogers and their wives to say "Ah, geez. How risky. How trendy! How hip and dangerous are we!" venturing into the city, when hip and dangerous actually left the building the minute they walked through the door.
Now Kafka and Dostoevsky and the Bible will still be read no doubt but not because its all about the preening of young intellects or a genuine curiosity, but because Oprah or the minister at church said so. Today I missed the day when I could look forward to the strange man in the pink cowboy uniform come in, hitting on women, quoting Elliott and being completely oblivious to his own spectacle. Where now does the land of misfit people, the precursors to prepackaged cool go for a good cup of joe?
posted by Joe Blow @ 12/06/2004 10:16:00 PM
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