Ah, Starbucks, Seattle's temperamental teenager! She's long outgrown her training bra.
Founded here, headquartered here, fawned-over and cossetted, she's as closely watched as a pubescent-adolescent celebrity, and as exasperating a child as ever captured our fancy.
Starbucks remains the world's most popular brand, with something like 50 million customer visits a month. She's trying so hard, our mercurial, petulant sexpot! The world loves her, but the family that raised her, and still has her under its roof, knows her all too well. Is she really sneaking out of the house and having sex for money with strangers? It's too late for summer camp but we don't know if we should send her to reform school or to Hollywood.
The very latest news, the one that inspires this post, was in the Seattle Times yesterday: Starbucks in a shipping container. You don't unpack it; it's not a pop-up. That's it, the 448-square-foot shipping container is the whole thing. First one goes to Tukwila, near the Boeing plant on East Marginal Way.
Don't think of it as cheap, think of it as recycling the box that all the candy came in. What's that? You still think of Starbucks as a coffee shop? Dreamer.
Leave a comment