Latte Liberal
John McIntire of the Pittsburgh City Paper recently wrote a piece about being labeled a "latte liberal" because of his recent discovery of the addictive powers of Starbucks coffee, particularly their lattes. I don't really care about the issue of being labeled a "latte liberal" because you might frequent a particular establishment that, in McIntire's words, is the coffee shop equivalent of Wal-Mart. If the coffee is good, then it's good, and there's really nothing to be ashamed about by frequenting this particular behemoth.
What I find interesting, and personally agreeable to is the fact that McIntire confesses to being driven to Starbucks for one of the reasons I've given up frequenting the coffee shop I favored, the lack of consistency, a trait that seems to plague many independent coffee shops.

I've had some of the worst coffee I've ever ingested in coffee shops that seem to put more effort into creating an atmosphere in exclusiveness instead of making a decent pot of coffee. These shops are everywhere, and it's of little surprise that they frequently go out of business, such as the shop on the North Side that McIntire refers to in his article. In fact, McIntire confesses to finding this trait amongst the coffee shops that are located in the very neighborhood I live in, the South Side, so he could perhaps be referring to the shop I don't support any longer.

To clarify, along with the consistency issue, I find that another trait can be found among coffee shops that lose their appeal easily, and that's a commitment to remaining independent to some extent, or, at the very least, remaining dedicated to what makes the coffee shop just that, the coffee. When coffee shops expand to areas that seem more suited to restaurants, diners, and even libraries, then you're really not a coffee shop per say any longer. I realize that the nature of business is expansion, but there's something not quite kosher about a shop expanding into areas that aren't, in any conceivable way, designed to generate more money to save a dying establishment. In other words, if the changes are done out of nothing more than simple greed, then the shop loses its focus not only for its main attraction, the coffee, but it also loses that which independent coffee shops strive to acquire more than anything else, street cred. Excluding the minimalist interiors and antiseptic atmosphere, in my mind coffee shops should look like a Starbucks with coffee, some desserts, and nothing else to clutter up the area. Tables to sit at and music playing in the background are also required, but not that inane elevator nonsense that Starbucks cranks in. Again, in other words, Starbucks is the perfect coffee shop design, but it's something only a corporation could come up with and produce on a massive scale. All the sterility of a Kubrick movie adds up to a factory that brews the best coffee that I know of, but I wouldn't sit in one for more than half an hour.