friends of convenience

Well let me preface this with I am back in Los Angeles. In Barcelona I avoided Starbucks at all costs, it is basically the American embassy of the city. And here I find myself having lunch in Culver City with a friend and she has no Internet at home and needed to do a sexual harassment online training course for work. So, here we are at Starbucks. First, I take issue with lunch costing almost 20 dollars these days in LA, with tip included, something I have gotten un-used to in Spain, it not being the culture. Second, I know Starbucks has (now let me pick the perfect word here… poor, bad, horrible, shitty, unfortunate coffee) sub par quality coffee considering they are a coffee shop, not a restaurant with fabulous food but not the best coffee, which is annoying but not ridiculous. I’ve gotten spoiled with delicious Spanish coffee even at the old man bars on the corner, nothing fancy just a good roast, hot when you order it not served in a paper cup, small, powerful and rich. So, I thought an espresso would be a safe bet here at Starbucks. I ordered it “for here”… what a concept. They guy comes back with my drink in a bowl made for a double latte like a good 16oz mug. And there at the bottom is my single shot of espresso. Like the sad left overs of a larger American sized coffee. The cold mug turned my sad shot into a luke warm mess. (This is besides the fact that the espresso just was not tasty. So I get it iced, he fills the bowl up to the brim with ice,

Maybe all this is silly and trivial

In fact it most definitely is, but I just find it absurd that they have become the most recognized coffee mark in the entire world and their coffee sucks. Yet it’s full in here and we had to wait for a table.

It’s just like people there are those people who are just not good friends, or just overall low quality, yet they dress up, are in the right clubs, offer to let you use their wifi and are always around so they are convenient friends and you hang out with them, even though you don’t really like them.

Brilliant marketing but it scares me because what if in our lives we settle for convenient friends, or just add enough sugar to our coffee so you cant even taste what it really is like. How do we really know what we are getting ourselves into?