The Dean Martinization of Starbucks

So today I go into my local Starbucks because for the last week, I dunno, the idea of cleaning out the coffee filter, grinding my cheap but perfectly serviceable Costco beans and making my coffee myself just hasn't appealed to me, it's seemed like too much work, where somehow walking two and a half blocks to Starbucks hasn't, which surely has less to do with the actual number of ergs expended than with the fact that it's just getting out and seeing the world for a half a second before chaining myself back to the computer. So I notice while I'm there that there's a new case for the food items, taller, actually I've been aware it existed for a while but this is the first time it made an impression on me, which has a sign on it which says "Starbucks fresh Scones. Taste the difference." Which is interesting because I realize there hasn't been a scone in the case for the week or two since they got it, in fact as I look over the stuff that's in there I realize it really doesn't look nearly as good as it used to, it's not just that they're missing the scones I liked but that everything has a prefab, Marriott Corporation food services division look to it, like the array of breakfast pastries offered for free at the Comfort Inn by the airport in Canton, Ohio, in about 1987, it's just not upscale looking stuff, you think about the lemon knots that used to be their signature goodie and then you look at this stuff and it's like, Au Bon Pain could beat that, let alone Caribou or Panera, and this brings me to a theory I used to bounce off people a few years ago, which is that everything hip follows a cycle that I call the Dean Martin curve, which is, it achieves hipness and is the hippest thing on earth until suddenly, without even knowing it, it instantly flips over to being the squarest thing on earth, which is kind of what happened to Dino when you compare the Dino of Ocean's Eleven to the Dino doing a celebrity roast of Charo or Jack Klugman or somebody in the early 70s, with Foster Brooks and Orson Welles, somehow what was unbelievably hip and aspirational, being as sharply dressed and as drunk as Dino, became unbelievably square without ever having changed in its own essentials, I mean, it's not like Dean ever pulled a Telly Savalas and did an album of Grateful Dead covers in a Nehru jacket, he stayed true to his Dino-self, but coming into our living rooms every week phoning in his sub-Hef swinger party show was different from the exclusivity of Dean and Frank and Sammy making a movie about robbing Vegas which was, we all knew, a play on the underlying reality of them already owning the town in the first place. And so Starbucks will reach the same point someday, I don't know when but some combination of Frappucino sold in bottles and 8000 stores in every mall on earth and so on will make them suddenly cease being the model, the wonder, the place you go to affirm your yuppieness and turn them into Denny's, JC Penney, Buick, the no-status unhip symbol of the era that ended, with a loud thunk, two seconds earlier. And the pastries I saw this morning were the beginning of that end.

Hilarious. What's cool becomes stale, no doubt about it.

I'm going to let your snide reference to Foster Brooks go (in progress I've got a draft of "Notes Toward a Better World: Be Nice to Drunks," so I plan to counter this unfair negativity toward the Lovable Lush at a later date).

I guess your June 16 Bloomsday post wasn't enough to get the stream of consciousness out of your system, hunh?

Hammond

PS. Doing work for Sara Lee, I felt compelled today to try their coffee as featured in the new Iced Lattes at Dunkin' Donuts ("Snap Yourself Back") -- wasn't as good as the Frappacini at Starbucks, which is really the only product from there I like even a little.

I heard somewhere that Judy's in Evanston supplied their lemon knots.The last time I drove by Judy's it looked like they were out of business.

I like the theory. It seems to generally hold true -- see e.g. leisure suits, disco, Australia. Does this mean that we can expect a nostalgic rehipping of Starbuck's at some future date?

Incidentally, I recently saw something I had never seen -- an empty Starbuck's. It was the one at the corner of Archer and Cicero. Maybe the southwest side is ahead of the curve.

Yes, here's a version of the story:

http://www.chowhound.com/midwest/boards ... 20482.html

Maybe there's a Starbucks side to it too that makes their decision explicable, but to me it looks like a corporate decision on something other than taste grounds that was part of a general quality slide.

Mike G wrote:And so Starbucks will reach the same point someday, I don't know when but some combination of Frappucino sold in bottles and 8000 stores in every mall on earth and so on will make them suddenly cease being the model, the wonder, the place you go to affirm your yuppieness and turn them into Denny's, JC Penney, Buick, the no-status unhip symbol of the era that ended, with a loud thunk, two seconds earlier. And the pastries I saw this morning were the beginning of that end.

The theory is one of fashion moving on and the tastes of youth overcoming those of the aged, a constant going back centuries.

However, the theory that applies to Starbuck's is the one of something rare becoming something common and therefore subject to ordinary evaluation. Coors Beer, for example, used to be touted as an extraordinary elixir, a mountain-high feat of brewing. Once it became nationally distributed, everybody realized it was just another weak American beer. Likewise, Starbucks lost its claim to cachet soon after it expanded out of Seattle. Cognoscenti soon began deploring its corporate sameness, ubiquity and over-roasted beans, dubbing it the McDonald's of coffeehouses.

Starbuck's has certainly raised American coffee standards throughout the country, but if it was ever hip, it hasn't been so for years.

I think when Coors became nationwide we actually did not get the same product as they do in Colorado.I heard that what was sold there at that time at least was a different strength.It had something to do with the different state laws.I am not sure but that is what I heard.

Starbuck's has certainly raised American coffee standards throughout the country, but if it was ever hip, it hasn't been so for years.

Well, I suppose to those of us who dance the night away in heroin shooting galleries having metrosexual sex with Russian hackers dressed solely in Prada, Starbucks isn't hip, but it does have that level of retail mall cache that makes it respectable to say to a client or fellow soccer mom "Let's meet at Starbucks at 10," and which does not make it respectable in our world to say "Let's meet at The Great Steak & Fry Company at 10" or "Let's meet at the Sealy Posturepedic store" or "Let's meet at the L. Ron Hubbard Dianetics Center." Even within the realm of places that actually serve coffee, Starbucks, like Borders, is acceptable in a way that Denny's or Dunkin' Donuts are not unless you have already established your hipster, bohemian credentials sufficiently that meeting at Denny's is, like, a daring statement against that whole Starbucks thing, man. Which indeed is itself another sign that the Dean Martinization has begun.

Some of those soccer moms would secretly prefer to be at the House of Whacks.Or so I've heard.

hattyn wrote:Some of those soccer moms would secretly prefer to be at the House of Whacks.

When did they start serving coffee?

MikeG:

I too enjoyed your stream of consciousness post, and evoking Dean Martin is certainly amusing, but I donI too enjoyed your stream of consciousness post, and evoking Dean Martin is certainly amusing, but I don't think the analogy between Starbucks and Dean Martin really works. The shift of opinion regarding Dean Martin has to be seen in the context of the late 60's, when suddenly everything became polarized into 'establishment' and 'anti-establishment'. Dean Martin was liked by the parents' generation, hence he was unquestionably not hip. I'm not old enough to remember an earlier time when Dean Martin was hip; I do vividly remember that Elvis was NOT hip - he was right there with Richard Nixon and Reader's Digest and pro football as markers of the 'America: Love It or Leave It' side. The rehabilitation of Elvis came after his death of course, probably through the hip crowd's ironic amusement with National Enquirer headlines and Elvis impersonator conventions.

What's going on with Starbucks, I'd say, is instead the defining phenomenon of the 90's/00's --- corporate greed run rampant, driven to saturate the market with more and more franchises.* The same impulse tends to change the product being offered, blanding it out, in order to appeal to more and more customers. I see now you have to specify that you want coffee in your Frappuccino. (!! What is the '-uccino' part supposed to mean? It's become as ridiculous as the 'Pasta-Roni' product one can buy in the grocery store.) The original idea of a distinctive, worthwhile product to offer gets lost in the desire to make more and more money. To throw in another example (for MikeG the film buff), look at what happens to cable channels. AMC used to show old black-and-white movies from the 40's; Bravo had independent films each Friday. Now they are showing Predator and celebrity poker. I don't know but I imagine this is because the original companies were acquired by larger entities who don't care about niche programming but who instead want something that will attract the advertising dollars.

So I'd say that the shift from hip to un-hip for Starbucks will come through its ubiquity and loss of a distinctive product (are Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts converging??), not through the sort of upheaval seen in the 60's that banished Dean Martin to the realm of the hopelessly square. (The irony of the 60's, of course, is that many of the vocal anti-corporate protestors of the time have gone on to lead the corporate expansions of our day.)

As a final note let me say that I find Starbucks far less objectionable than McDonalds and most other chains. I remember the Loop in pre-Starbucks days, when it was very difficult to find good coffee. (An exception was the Printers' Row cafe Gourmand, which responded to the opening of a Starbucks a block away by improving itself and offering things not found at Starbucks, and which has thrived.) I was happy when Starbucks first opened at O'Hare; I was delighted to find not one but two Starbucks when I was in Manchester, England a few years ago. There used to be a lot of bad coffee out there, and having Starbucks is a big step forward.


* In the Olive Garden thread, Erik M recommended the column by Jeffrey Steingarten in June Vogue on chain restaurants. It is indeed worthwhile reading. Sample fact: "Three-quarters of all Americans live within three miles of a McDonald's."
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=665

This phenominon is called Jumping the Shark. There's a whole websitededicated to the discussion of when (mostly) TV shows Jumped the Shark. The term was coined to describe how Happy Days got very lame after an episode where the Fonz actually jumped a shark using a surfboard (and never got wet).

Amata wrote:The shift of opinion regarding Dean Martin has to be seen in the context of the late 60's, when suddenly everything became polarized into 'establishment' and 'anti-establishment'. Dean Martin was liked by the parents' generation, hence he was unquestionably not hip. I'm not old enough to remember an earlier time when Dean Martin was hip; I do vividly remember that Elvis was NOT hip - he was right there with Richard Nixon and Reader's Digest and pro football as markers of the 'America: Love It or Leave It' side.

Amata,

I was watching PBS (another compromised institution) last night, and I watched a Frank Sinatra special (early 70s), in which he said he "loved" the music of the "young people" singing about "getting high...hey, I never came down," quipped the heavily scripted Frank to a befuddled Ella Fitzgerald. Watching Frank, I remembered how much I disliked him when I was busy smashing the state in an effort to return the means of production to the people, and I didn't like him much last night as he sang "Up, Up and Away" and other pop songs not covered by Sebastian Cabot or William Shatner. It was sad, but now, it's almost hard to remember a time when Frank was not hip, but there was that time, and it's well-documented.

Hammond

If so many people are willing to buy it is that the corporation's fault?There are plenty of independent places to go.I like the mom and pop places but sometimes I would rather have a good consistent cup of coffee than a bad independent..

Although certainly there was the establishment and the anti-establishment in the 60s, one reason that I used Dino as the exemplar and not, say, Jack Webb (on whom I have written passionately here) was that he occupied that middle ground between the two-- where did the first cracks in the establishment's wall come from, after all? It wasn't because millions of people read Howl or even listened to Surrealistic Pillow. It was because Frank and Dean and Hef and so many others sold a hedonistic, drop out (of conventional middle-class morality), turn on (with a martini and some Mantovani) lifestyle. To most of America, the late 60s counterculture wasn't Woodstock nearly so much as it was Laugh-In. So I date the tectonic shift in Dean's hipness to the early 70s, when the swinger lifestyle started to go stale (see any Roger Moore Bond film for more details), rather than to 1968 Haight-Ashbury, which was a tiny phenomenon seen less in life than in Life; and consequently think that the political aspects of the 60s had less to do with it than a lifestyle change which suddenly made any guy in a dinner jacket drinking Scotch seem weirdly quaint. Another Fuzzy Navel while I flip the new Seals & Croft over?

As for AMC, the reason old movie channels came into existence was because of people like my late grandfather, who got cable and then were horrified to find that HBO was full of pottymouthed new movies. AMC and later TCM were created as something to help cable operators keep that demographic from cancelling. But as people who actually saw 30s movies the first time in theaters die off, they are forced to adjust their focus to more recent films to serve the same function for people who grew up on 60s and 70s movies. Anyway, while the dumbing of AMC is an indisputable fact, I point this out to make it clear that marketing concerns were ever front and center, there was never a golden age...

I see now that you have to specify that you want coffee in your Frappuccino.

Great minds dept., check this out from lileks.com today:

Off to Starbucks to read the book. I was behind a fellow who had ten years on me; he was schooled in the old ways of joe. He placed his order thus:

"A cup of coffee, black."

"Room for cream?"

Pause.

"No."

I was next. What would I like?

"I'd like a medium coffee," I said, since I"ll be gol-durned if I ever say "venti" to these people. I'll give them Beijing for Peking, Hindu for Hindoo, but medium will be Medium until the day I die. "Black."

"Room for cream?"

Kids today. They don't know. They've lost the lingo. When you've established that the nature of your coffee is BLACK, cream no longer enters into the picture. Ever. But you could walk up and say "Blorg chulavista spaz mocha" and she'd ask "Room for cream?" It's the script. Hidden cameras record her every word. They beat her with burlap sacks stuffed with beans if she doesn't say the words.

I feel a need to point out that to be unhip is a negative only to the hip and the would-be hip. Most of America is not hip, and if it were, it would be unhip to be hip. Dig?

There was a note above asking if Starbucks was no longer cool.

Starbucks was never cool, it was hip. There's a difference. I can't remember where I read this gem of wisdom (Entertainment Weekly? The Tempo section of the Trib?), but it's dead on:

Cool is eternal, hip is the moment

Starbucks is hip, Hopper's Nighthawks is eternally cool.

Madonna is always chasing hip, Bowie is cool.

Chipotle mayo on a burger is hip, browned roquefort atop a steak is cool.

For more on fads and trends and one of the funniest books I've ever read, pick up "Bellwether" by Connie Willis. She's a modern-day Twain, using fantastic and science fiction elements to skewer our sacred cows. Bellwether is actually her book with the least SF in it -- it's happening today (actually, a few years ago -- basil in everything is no longer hip).

LAZ wrote:I feel a need to point out that to be unhip is a negative only to the hip and the would-be hip. Most of America is not hip, and if it were, it would be unhip to be hip. Dig?

Yes, exactly! There was a thread on CHwhere some poor guy came in asking for the hippest places to take his out of town friends and found himself in a dark alley with Harry V. You WANT to read Harry's first post, trust me, but in the meantime to this point I'll quote one of my own points:

"I remember Joe Queenan wrote a rant in Spy once which was amusing, but to my mind totally wrong, about how square jazz is, because it's populated by fat middle aged guys with goatees talking their own lingo about Bird and Diz and chord changes and so on... and all I could think was, yeah, that's WHY it's hip. Because it's totally past worrying about what this year's trend in Milan or Tokyo is, and living in its own world with its own values. And that was when I knew that I had reached the point (or the age) where there was nothing squarer than trying to be hip, and nothing hipper than being into something that would absolutely stupefy a 20something."

Edit: I see the "poor guy" was in fact our own Leek. I had forgotten that.

Even within the realm of places that actually serve coffee, Starbucks, like Borders, is acceptable in a way that Denny's or Dunkin' Donuts are not unless you have already established your hipster, bohemian credentials sufficiently that meeting at Denny's is, like, a daring statement against that whole Starbucks thing, man.

while my memories are bit hazy ( hey it was always , like, 3am), i seem to recall that the denny's on austin(?) was the deliquent destination long before starbucks entered oak park. and dude, i'm not even from here.

Mike G wrote:... and consequently think that the political aspects of the 60s had less to do with it than a lifestyle change ...

hmm... what's the difference between politics and lifestyle? Remember: "the personal is political" [feminist Carol Hanisch, 1970]

It was because Frank and Dean and Hef and so many others sold a hedonistic, drop out (of conventional middle-class morality), turn on (with a martini and some Mantovani) lifestyle. To most of America, the late 60s counterculture wasn't Woodstock nearly so much as it was Laugh-In.

I think Eric nailed it. Not that I was doing much in the late 60's, being in utero and all, but I fancy myself a connoisseur of bad TV and wiseguy entertainment. I have never perceived Dean Martin or Sinatra circa 1970 to have been anything but wildly popular and at maybe the 1999 Starbuck's level of popular hip (as opposed to hip hip; compare White Stripes 2004 and White Stripes 1999).

But the discourse here stems from a poor premise: that there is one kind of hip. I 'm sure that the sight of Sinatra or Martin or, probably the greatest single entertainer of all time, Milton Berle, churned stomachs in Haight Ashbury, Madison and Berkeley for a long time. But in a different milieu, I submit, these characters never became completely unhip. There is principled counterculture, like that of the sad tie-dyed deadheads that make Haight fairly less hip than your average Wal-Mart, and then there are the amorally hip. Those who sell licentiousness, graft, and violence below the surface of popular consumer culture as hip. As long as these people actually associate with the truly dangerous and objectively counter-cultural (e.g., Momo Giancana), their nihilistic hipness is largely assured. This kind of hip tends to age more gracefully, with the pitiful exception of Hugh Heffner. And, of course, sometimes, the nihilistic hipster becomes confused, trying to portray the principled hipster and/or the pop-culture hipster playing himself, as opposed to playing the system. See Henry Rollins.

I get violent when I'm f**ked up
I get silent when I'm drugged up
Want excitement, don't get none, I go wild
I don't know what can be done about it
If you play the game you get nothing out of it
Find out for yourself try bein' a goody goody
You better cheat cheat
No reason to play fair
Cheat cheat or don't get anywhere
Cheat cheat if you can't win

(Strummer/Jones)

JeffB wrote:

It was because Frank and Dean and Hef and so many others sold a hedonistic, drop out (of conventional middle-class morality), turn on (with a martini and some Mantovani) lifestyle. To most of America, the late 60s counterculture wasn't Woodstock nearly so much as it was Laugh-In.

I think Eric nailed it. Not that I was doing much in the late 60's, being in utero and all, but I fancy myself a connoisseur of bad TV and wiseguy entertainment. I have never perceived Dean Martin or Sinatra circa 1970 to have been anything but wildly popular and at maybe the 1999 Starbuck's level of popular hip (as opposed to hip hip; compare White Stripes 2004 and White Stripes 1999).

I was alive and fairly often conscious back then and Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In were all very popular, "wildly" so even, but they were not 'hip' in the sense the word was used back in the day. They were main-stream establishment frauds, with gaudy rings and artfully flared pants, overly coiffed pseudo-hip hair-do's and, for the daring, Tom Jones-like mutton chops (yeccch!). Their hedonism was seen as decadent, as a fine expression of the two-faced hypocrisy of them. They were no more 'hip' than the Monkees or Iron Butterfly or Grand Funk Railroad, which were some of the crasser attempts by the establishment to co-opt what was 'hip'. Kids who liked these groups were dorky, grotty squares. Kids who liked the likes of Dean Martin and Laugh-In were sell-outs and suspected of doing so either out of utter stupidity and terminal plasticity or else to stay close to their parents so the allowance kept flowing-- not much difference there*...

Dean Martin... Laugh In... In the day these were anything but 'hip'...

"Plastic people... oh baby, now, you're such a drag..."

Antonius


*Such people were addressed here by the first person I genuinely admired, Frank Zappa:
"Take a day
And walk around
Watch the nazis
Run your town
Then go home
And check yourself
You think we're singing
'Bout someone else.."

Terrence wrote:

Even within the realm of places that actually serve coffee, Starbucks, like Borders, is acceptable in a way that Denny's or Dunkin' Donuts are not unless you have already established your hipster, bohemian credentials sufficiently that meeting at Denny's is, like, a daring statement against that whole Starbucks thing, man.

while my memories are bit hazy ( hey it was always , like, 3am), i seem to recall that the denny's on austin(?) was the deliquent destination long before starbucks entered oak park. and dude, i'm not even from here.

A an OPRFHS grad I would concur with this assessment - Denny's on Austin Ave was (don't know if it still is) the hangout of choice for one significent segment of students/young adults - open late, kept the coffee flowing (and for many of that group, allowed smoking) - but mostly it was the open late - as in all night - that was a big part of the attraction, plus prices that were amenable for a high school budget.

I wasn't exactly part of that particular crowd on a regular basis (was even more of an outcast than them) but it does point to the possibliity that the right group of people can take nearly any establishment and shift the perception of it considerably.

Other examples which I am aware of:

- Caribu Coffee when they had their location on Wells & North Ave. became the chess playing destination of choice on the north side, especially during the winter, but even during the summer months when the lakefront chess pavilion was full or it grew too dark outside. For a time the chess players moved to the Starbucks on North & Wells (but appear to have left now at least for the summer) and then for a time moved to the Burger King on the corner.

I's sure there are many other examples out there of places being changed over time from typical to atypical.

Shannon

Antonius, thanks for your perspective. I know, as I did at the time that I wrote the above, that it was foolhardy to make proclamations about things I did not experience directly. Something many seem wont to do regarding food experiences on other sites....

Jeff:

I hope I didn't go overboard with my comments but it is true that for a lot of young people, and the people that seemed supremely hip or at least maximally counter-culture, the loathing for adult institutions was amazingly strong and feelings were no less venomous for the pseudo-hip types than for the Nixons and John Waynes...

I do remember too, on account of being involved in music and particularly jazz and 'fusion', there was a recognition of Sinatra, say, as a singing talent but also a sense of disgust at his Vegas and Hollywood connexions and his over-the-top singing performances, as in 'Strangers in the Night' (not to mention the fact that he was father of the unimaginably unhip Nancy)... I also remember similar mixed opinions about Elvis, positive about his early period but unsurpassably negative about the Elvis of the 1960-s and 1970's... In fact, I still find Elvis worship bizarre at a gut level, because whenever I hear his name, I think first of the bloated Vegas/Hollywood curio who was something of a poster boy for the notion of 'sell-out' in the late 60's and 70's until, of course, his apotheosis.

I think you're right, though, that there are and always have been to a degree competing hip scenes and, what I offer as my perspective, I would not claim was formed at the epicentre of hipness. Indeed, given I was a fan of Zappa, it couldn't have been.

A

Mike G wrote:Well, I suppose to those of us who dance the night away in heroin shooting galleries having metrosexual sex with Russian hackers dressed solely in Prada, Starbucks isn't hip

Thanks, Mike. I snarfed a mouthful of water out of my nose when I read that and laughed at an inopportune moment. Wouldn't dancing in a shooting gallery be risky, as you might step on a semi-conscious junkie? How does one have metrosexual sex, anyway?

It was my understanding that all the hipsters had either fled for independant coffeehouses (like my near and dear Atomix) or just the outrageously overpriced variety (Like Julius Meinel - where you go when you simply must pay $15 for a latte and a slice of quiche).

At any rate, with the recent fad of nerds being cool, hipsters being despised, counterculture being popular, and indie rockers only being trendy if they reek of cigarette smoke (but hey - Rainbo has Simpson's pinball!) it's just too confusing to keep track of it all.

Well, Zappa is an interesting case-in-point. He was supremely hip, in the so-hip you can't make me care sense described by Harry V. That his issue could be so achingly un-hip under anyone's definition of the word is ironic.

JeffB wrote:Well, Zappa is an interesting case-in-point. He was supremely hip...

Well, he was hip but I don't think I would say he was supremely hip, at least not in the period from '67 (Freak Out) to '72 or '73 (Chunga's Revenge or so)*... he and his following was in ways too politically incorrect (before the concept had a name) to be mainstream hip... Certainly not hip in the way that figures like John Lennon or Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix were... There was too much of a weird and soiled and sarcastic edge to Zappa... But I'd certainly like to think that his early fans were even better than hip...

That his issue could be so achingly un-hip under anyone's definition of the word is ironic.

Did you see any of that appalling show on Food Network with his son and some horrible girl singer (Lisa something, I think)?... The other Zappa kids seem to be equally goofy...

A

* He got broader acceptance and even recognition among people who weren't necessarily fans in the course of the seventies but then also lost much of his old following during that period, including me.

You mean people don't go to Starbucks for the coffee? Only 'cause it is or was hip? It has to be true. I realize some might enjoy their coffee, but many complain about "Charbucks" and it's burnt, bitter taste.

When Charbucks moved into my Roscoe Village neighborhood I deliberately chose to not walk through the doors the first two years it was there. Then, damn it, it just is so convenient.

There is no consistency in the way they make a cappucino and it's usually cold, so I have to ask for it "extra hot" along with all the other lingo I'm supposed to use.

I used to be able to order and ICED DOPPIO(two shots of espresso over ice). Now, I have to ask for a TALL ICED AMERICANO NO WATER! Wassup wit that?

When I'm in California it is so awesome to see the empty Starbucks and the lines out the door at PEETS. The best cappucino. Some restaurants in Chicago serve PEETS and there is one location near the Whole Foods on North Ave(see their website). They are focused on the coffee and it's good. Whereas, Starbucks is selling board games.

Food Nut wrote:You mean people don't go to Starbucks for the coffee? Only 'cause it is or was hip? It has to be true. I realize some might enjoy their coffee, but many complain about "Charbucks" and it's burnt, bitter taste.

The guy I buy coffee from (Haye's in Oak Park) explained to me that Starbuck's over-roasts their coffee because they use an inferior bean, and the excessive cooking hides the off-tastes.

I do drink frothy coffee drinks in the summer, and I think the Frappacino actually works pretty well (the bitterness of the bean is modified with loads of cream and sugar; I'm not sure that balance would work with a subtler coffee flavor).

Hammond