Starbucks: a personal history

Family and friends who know me as a coffee snob might be surprised to learn I was late to the Starbucks party. But, I've been making up for lost time.

Since I grew up drinking Cuban-style cafe con leche my mother learned to make from my abuela, before crafting them myself as a teenager, I never cared much for the Dunkin' Donuts or typical convenience store, diner or restaurant coffees widely available in New Jersey in the 1970s. With few exceptions, I would find them weak, tasteless or just plain awful. During the late '70s and early '80s, in fact, I would sometimes go to a Greenwich Village cafe on weekends to have great espresso-based coffee made for me and my date (who eventually became my wife).

New Jersey's first Starbucks cafe opened in Ridgewood in November 1993, according to the New York Times. Although it's hard to believe, the first New York City Starbucks cafe (at Broadway and 87th Street) didn't open until the following year, in April 1994.

It wasn't until March 2002 that I first tried Starbucks coffee. I was in Honolulu and, disappointed in the weak local kona coffee, I ventured into a Starbucks cafe across the street from my hotel and ordered a caffe latte. That first cup reminded me of my grandmother's coffee, which to that point in my life had only been matched by my mother and Cuban cafes on Bergenline Avenue in Union City, New Jersey. I went back to that Starbucks cafe every morning while I was in Honolulu. Today, almost 15 years later, I can still think of sitting in the balcony of my hotel room, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, when I enjoy a caffe latte.

When I returned from Hawaii, I sought out local Starbucks cafes and never was disappointed by their coffee or service. Whether I was in the U.S. or Europe, I would be impressed by the consistency of their quality and pleased by their friendly employees. Away from home, I would find some comfort relaxing in their cafes with a morning or afternoon caffe latte.

When we visited our eldest son in college, my wife and I and our youngest son would stop at a Starbucks in White Plains and order coffees for the ride home. During the nearly fours years I worked in midtown Manhattan, I looked forward to stepping out to a nearby Starbucks some afternoons for a pick-me-up coffee to bring back to the office.

My tastes eventually expanded to appreciate some of their other drinks, including pumpkin space latte, chai tai latte and smoothies (typically with a shot of espresso added). Along with the classic caffe latte, my favorite Starbucks coffee is the flat white with some vanilla powder mixed in and a dash of cinnamon on top.  

Today, less than 25 years later after they first appeared in the New York metropolitan area, there are over 100 Starbucks locations in New Jersey and almost 250 in New York City, and that's not counting book stores, hotels and other businesses that "proudly serve" Starbucks coffees.

Although Starbucks has managed to grow exponentially without compromising the quality of their beverages, the same can't be said of their service. Not all baristas are friendly, and a clean, comfortable cafe in which to relax is no longer a given. I guess that's to be expected from a chain that grew from 17 U.S. locations in 1987 to 22,519 globally on June 28, 2015 (according to www.starbucks.com) and now has almost 240,000 employees, few of which are likely to make it their career.   

I still enjoy an espresso-based coffee at a Greenwich Village cafe. I'm grateful for the increasing number of Cuban cafes appearing across New Jersey and New York, the ones of which I've sampled offer outstanding coffees. I'm pleasantly surprised by the quality of McCafe coffees, and in fact have stopped at McDonald's just for their lattes. My family continues to get a kick out of the different espresso coffees I craft for them. 

I still find satisfactory coffees at diners and restaurants few and far in between, and usually don't bother ordering them at the end of my meals anymore.  I still haven't tasted a good cup of coffee from Dunkin' Donuts, even though there is one less than two blocks from my home. The convenience store coffees I've tried have been unremarkable.

A Starbucks cafe when I'm away from home and wanting a great cup of coffee, on the other hand, remains a welcome sight. I've enjoyed making up for lost time, coffee snob that I am. 

Relaxing at a Starbucks cafe in Zurich, Switzerland; March 2011

  

The downtown edge

It's true: lower Manhattan has a different vibe, a different energy and edge, compared to midtown. I tasted it first-hand while spending a few days last week working, eating, sleeping and walking around Soho, Chinatown and Little Italy, by Tribeca.

Walking down Canal Street, which hasn't seemed to change at all over the years, I was asked more than once about my interest in buying a Rolex watch. I stopped to ask a cop if the distinct structure a few blocks south was the municipal building. Seemingly unsure, she said it was "down there a few blocks." As I walked across a courtyard full of cars at the Manhattan Detention Center, a man walked out of a building and into the waiting arms of a woman who seemed thrilled to see him.

Back on Canal Street, I walked past a seafood store with its front open to the sidewalk, from where all kinds of people, young, old, middle age; black, white, yellow; men, women, undetermined; seemed determined to find the best value among all kinds of sea fare, some of which looked more appetizing than others.

Continuing past groups of tourists and other out-of-towners, I made my way down Mulberry Street and into what remains of Little Italy, which certainly seems smaller than it was a generation or two ago. By Grand Street, a white-haired man in a white t-shirt lowered and dangled a pink shopping bag on a string from the second floor window of an old apartment building. He beckoned a lady below to "get it." After protesting loudly, she eventually took something from inside the bag and entered the building. Minutes later, the guy in the t-shirt was still by his window, now shut, seeming to stare at blank space between his apartment and the street below.

A woman in a white Mercedes-Benz SL 500 pulled into a parking spot that a friend on the sidewalk seemed to somehow save for her. Down the street, two ladies made their way toward Canal Street slowly, almost aimlessly, passing Italian restaurants and various stores. "Everything in the store is under $10; bags, scarves," a man on the sidewalk told them. They paused, and walked on. For some reason, I began to think of a book I read more than once as a child, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss and Robert Carington - published in 1937, and still seeming to capture the neighborhood's fantasies.

Back on Canal Street, a young inter-racial couple walked leisurely, sharing some laughs. "You can't bite your nails," she said. "Why?" he asked. "Because I can't," she responded. Later that evening, on the sidewalk outside a Soho post office at Prince and Greene Streets, I spotted a tribute to Steve Jobs that can only be described as...very Soho, or downtown. The late Apple leader probably would've liked it. A middle-age guy who spends a lot of time in midtown photographed it and posted it on Twitter.

Elsewhere in Soho, the neighborhood's boutiques and other stores closed for the evening, smokers were hanging outside clubs. A hotel set up ropes outside its front doors in anticipation of a late night crowd trying to get into its bar. Two young professional ladies walked out, tapped furiously on their BlackBerrys, and jumped into a taxi for some dancing at another downtown spot.

If you look beyond technology, there's probably little that's changed in the vibe and energy of lower Manhattan during the past 100-200 years. According to historians, it's always had an edge, an edge that kept pushing the city's initial waves of elites north to midtown and beyond, to the orderliness of the grid designed by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. Robert Moses threatened the neighborhood's edge with the Lower Manhattan Expressway over a century later, but the highway was never built, ensuring Soho and other neighborhoods below the grid were more than an area to drive quickly through. That was a good thing, because there are a lot of interesting things to stop and see in downtown.