The music and the cold in­dus­trial ven­ti­la­tion noise of this place ar­rive un­wanted through pipes above my head. The walls are aged wood pan­el­ing, like we were sit­ting out­side by Leopold’s chicken coop home, ex­cept that you can see at the edges that it’s com­pos­ite board. A chan­de­lier is caged in some sort of old fish­ing equip­ment, the table un­der­neath has been care­fully and ar­ti­fi­cially bat­tered to em­u­late the rus­tic farm look. The burnt or­ange vel­vet over­stuffed sofa with gold tas­sel­ing tries to re­mind you of an es­tate sale find but it loses its au­then­tic­ity be­cause there are twenty of these sofas, mixed in with old din­ing chairs pulled up to new metal ta­bles. The over­all ef­fect pro­duces a slight un­ease.

A medium-sized jew­elry box ar­rived last week, with a soft nest of bat­ting ten­derly cradling a frag­ile plas­tic rec­tan­gle. What would I do with a Star­bucks gift card? I’ve come here as an ex­per­i­ment. This cafe is one of their new fake neigh­bor­hood places. It of­fers tea in teapots and lattes in real cups, but I have the feel­ing they’re try­ing to sneak some­thing by me.

Is it snobby to con­sider Star­bucks the epit­ome of cor­po­rate-passe? In many sub­urbs where they are just ar­riv­ing in strip malls, there is no cafe cul­ture to com­pare to. As meet­ing places they are at least bet­ter than fast food restau­rants and maybe even a step up from the built-in cafes in dying big-box book­stores. Here in Seat­tle, Star­bucks is a home­town hero, but its ubiq­uity makes it eas­ily mocked by the young hip­ster artist class seek­ing au­then­tic­ity. Or is that quite it?

Yes­ter­day it was mist­ing, forty, and still dark at six thirty. I was one of the only cus­tomers at the small cor­ner Star­bucks. Thank­fully, since I’d last vis­ited, some­one in the cus­tomer psy­chol­ogy de­part­ment had iden­ti­fied my type — Pro­file: rebels re­fus­ing to learn which sizes grande, venti, and tall cor­re­spond to. The cus­tomer-psy­chol­o­gists fig­ured out that this sub­type is al­ways going to be slightly an­noyed by this and re­spond with an eye-rolling “yeah, what­ever the medium size is,” often in an at­tempt to pro­voke a gen­uinely human con­ver­sa­tion. It is bet­ter for sales to in­stead ei­ther play along or make the drink with­out ad­mon­ish­ment, leav­ing the cus­tomer room to as­sume that they are en­gag­ing in a small de­fi­ance of the man, even as they hand their money over. They must be read­ing Seth Godin a lit­tle. — Thank­fully they also had trained the baris­tas not to re­spond in a nasal, di­dac­tic tone with “do you mean venti?” My order of a “medium” Earl Grey passed with­out com­ment.

I asked “for here,” but my tea came in two nested paper cups, a plas­tic lid and card­board sleeve. They don’t do tea well, how do you keep it from over steep­ing? I perched at the win­dow bench and started to write. Three baris­tas, all about my age, kept up a run­ning pat­ter. Each cus­tomer was greeted with “what can I get started for you this morn­ing?!” as if the cus­tomer was the only other per­son in the world, and each in turn bright­ened, feel­ing spe­cial, though the same line had been used on the guy who’d walked in a minute ear­lier.

Reg­u­lars were served “the usual?” and en­cour­aged to re­count their week­ends. Though all were well re­ceived, the only story that made me lis­ten was about a date. It started with a drink at the bar across from his apart­ment, and then they had “gone back to his place and sang songs to­gether at the piano.” Leav­ing, the dater was al­most skip­ping with hap­pi­ness across the street with his cof­fee. The whole place bright­ened, every­one left in line was smil­ing, and there was lots of coo­ing from the baris­tas.

At seven fif­teen the sky was light­en­ing and I was still the only one sit­ting; every­one else was fu­el­ing on the go. Re­peated crash­ing from out­side: one of the metal chairs on the patio was being hefted over­head and slammed to the ground. A rolling suit­case was plonked down on the table, a lap­top case on top of that. A man wear­ing shades and jeans with a tan rivet web­bing belt from the nineties flopped down into the chair, in­tently run­ning his fin­ger up and down his smart phone. He was not wear­ing a shirt.

He looked like a frat boy turned in­vest­ment banker, his baby pot­belly jig­gled under a thick layer of hair. “Uggh, close your eyes” a barista gig­gled, and there was some si­lence as they tried to fig­ure out what to do with this un­ex­pect­edly shirt­less man on their patio. He wasn’t just a home­less per­son they could yell at and shoo away. He was the owner of ex­pen­sive elec­tron­ics which af­forded him some sta­tus; he would need a more care­fully rea­soned ap­proach.

Per­haps he was here on busi­ness, still drunk after a Sun­day night’s rev­els. Be­hind the bar “it’s pri­vate prop­erty” was par­roted back and forth in in­dig­nant agree­ment. After some time for the draw­ing up of courage, one marched out­side. Con­fronta­tion, she de­liv­ers her line, a short ex­change we all wish we could hear, and she re­turns. He’s pop­ping ear­buds out and lean­ing for­ward, get­ting up, and his shirt goes on. Then sur­pris­ingly she’s de­liv­er­ing him a plas­tic lid­ded cup of water, and he walks away with it, trans­formed. With a shirt and a ca­su­ally slung lap­top bag, he could have been any guy on the street. The story of her tri­umph poured out: “and I said: ‘you have to order some­thing’ and he was like ‘okay I’m just using your wi-fi lady, but I’ll take a water’ and I was like ‘water’s free so that’s not an order’ and he said ‘bring me some water and I’ll leave’ so I did!”

Is meet­ing to talk over drinks in­her­ently good? Does it have to be done in a beau­ti­ful at­mos­phere, or not at all? The thing is, you can order your pain et beurre in French from a real per­son at Cafe Presse, or make eye con­tact with the bearded flan­nel shirted guy be­hind the counter at Stump­town and know that you’re in­ter­act­ing with a human. Once you ex­pe­ri­ence that kind of depth, once you go be­neath the sur­face level of scripted in­ter­ac­tions and processed food and in­dus­tri­ally con­cocted cof­fee, it be­comes im­pos­si­ble to go back.

To peo­ple who haven’t gone deep, we may seem ar­ro­gant, that some­how we (and not they) de­serve real food, real peo­ple, beau­ti­ful places with wood, good chairs, maybe some pressed tin ceil­ings and unique­ness. Why isn’t cor­po­rate good enough for us, aren’t we caught up in being judg­men­tal all the time if what we love to eat, drink and buy can only be fully en­joyed when it is local, in­de­pen­dent, artist-made? It can’t pos­si­bly be worth the work, a friend’s brother ar­gued, de­fend­ing the medi­oc­rity of his black and white pre-framed tulip prints from a big box decor store. Only stuck-up hip­sters care, and they’re too busy judg­ing every­one to be happy. How in­ter­est­ing. Is it true?

If you live in a sub­urb, or if you haven’t yet dis­cov­ered how to eat, how to live, per­haps Star­bucks is re­ally the best op­tion. It is at least a cof­feeshop, and pro­vides a space for con­ver­sa­tion, thought, read­ing, and writ­ing — the in­gre­di­ents for cul­ti­vat­ing aware­ness. The scripted lines from the barista did offer peo­ple in­ter­ac­tions with other peo­ple. Train­ing wheels for the real thing, for when one day you look be­neath the sur­face and see that you’re no longer happy with medi­oc­rity. Once you tried that local restau­rant, indie cof­feeshop, or farmer’s mar­ket, you know there is some­thing more. Maybe you will think that it was lovely to have had such a place to meet and talk and grow, but now you have evolved. You don’t go to real places be­cause you’re stuck up, you go be­cause they’re real, they res­onate with you and noth­ing else is quite good enough.