We made it safe and sound to Sea-Tac late last night, and bright and early this morning we made a quick trip to the local grocery store to stock up on breakfast supplies, and we discovered that we really are in Seattle.
The grocery carts had cup-holders.
And of course there was a Starbucks inside the grocery store.
I didn’t know there was anything unusual about cupholders in grocery carts. We have several stores here in Michigan with them. Guess we like our beverages too!
Gosh, the grocery carts here in Austin have cup holders. Hell, there’s a wine and cheese bar at the grocery store I work for. Just right there in the middle of the store. You can get yourself a glass of wine to shop with. The grocery store down the street from me has a sushi bar. The Whole Foods in downtown has no less than seven restaurants spread through out the store. A big chocolate fountain near the bakery you can, I don’t know, dip your arm into and lick. Or something. I’ve never actually purchased anything in the store because it is vast, intimidating, expensive, and ranks behind the Capitol building for tourist destination.
You have to understand that we are but mere rubes from a teeny-tiny town in Hicksville, so there are many things in the big city that stun us with their novelty.
Welcome, PZ! As for the cup holders in grocery carts, that’s nothing. My wife and I were driving out to the peninsula recently and were passed by a motorcycle. A Harley Davidson motorcycle. With a cup holder. With a Starbucks venti cup that had one of those brown “don’t burn your fingers” deals wrapped around it in the cup holder.
The stores here in Portland have insulted cup holders for Microbrews…
The Grocery store in my neighborhood has a Starbucks – in Mobile ALABAMA. All of us here are laughing at you in Morris.
Where I live, they have a Starbucks INSIDE THE BATHROOM of another Starbucks.
Beat that.
In Baton Rouge the Albertson’s has has a Starbucks and carts with cup holders. In Morris I guess you have Kroger’s or Hy-Vee — very utilitarian, Midwestern chains.
I ran into the same thing for the first time today at a Super Stop and Shop here in New Jersey; a Starbucks was just next door, and about 1/4 of all the shoppers had a Starbucks cup sitting on top of their cart. I didn’t quite know what to make of it.
PZ, if it makes you feel any better, never in my life I have seen a grocery cart with a cup holder.
Some Kroger stores in the Dayton OH area have Starbucks stores with cart cup holders.
At the Albertsons in Oak Harbor, WA, there is a Starbuck’s inside the store, and one right next to the Albertson’s.
I’m not a coffee drinker, this shit is ridiculous.
Where I lived in Northern Virgnia, pompous shitheads would park in the fire lane to go inside Starbuck’s.
I’ve also never seen a grocery cart with a cup holder… the US is a strange place indeed.
Viva Seattle Tacoma, Viva Sea-Tac.
They’ve got the best coffee, computers and smack
My Berkeley grocery store has no cupholders in the carts either. And not a Starbucks in sight.
Of course, Chez Panisse is across the street and Peet’s is around the corner, and the wondrous Cheese Board is next door, a WAY more than even trade-off.
On the other hand, a utility cart we recently bought for the lab has a cupholder (not noted in catalog description), and I’m tempted to paint some flames down the side of it… (What, no iPod dock on it?)
I am now awed and terrified by the US. Cupholders? On a shopping trolley? Aren’t they just inviting more spills around the shop?
I always thought Kroger was a Deep South thing, like Piggly Wiggly and Waffle House.
I will never forgive the US for this obsession with coffee. I cant go in bookshops now without feeling ill from that awful stink..
Coffee is the greatest. I can’t respect a person who disparages coffee.
Huh, you Yanks haven’t seen anything. I went to the open day at Spike Island artists colony, Bristol, UK, and there were bars throughout. It was a pub and an art gallery all rolled into one, so you could wander round with a pint in your hand, looking at the art. How cool is that? And the beer was properly warm.
Well done with the whole separation of church and state thing though. That’s even better than having beer and art both together.
Stogoe,
Nope, Kroger products are everywhere, including Arizona. Also, the grocery store I worked for in the midwest as a teenager has been stocking Kroger stuff for several years now. Oh, there are also many many Waffle Houses in the Phoenix area and elsewhere throughout the state.
As for Starbucks, a pox (a non-hostile one) on Seattle’s coffee and cell phone franchises. I can’t use my laptop at Starbucks, Borders, or Seattle’s Best because they all have T-Mobile-only WiFi (courtesy of Seattle’s IT sector). Thus, I have to find other coffee places like Caribou or a local joint in which to sit, sip, and search. Granted supporting small private places is never a bad thing, and they’re usually numerous as well, so my complaint is largely moot…unless I’m in Seattle. Then I have to search the internets at the public library downtown, also a nice place…
Welcome PZ. Sorry it’s been raining since you arrived (shh, don’t tell ’em about the real weather, they’ll flood the place – ;*))
I’ve also neither seen nor heard of cup holders in shopping trollies.
There are Starbucks here in France (or at least there is one in Paris), but fortunately, none where I live. This means I can go to a real café, sit down, and enjoy good coffee at my leisure.
There is, unfortunately, a McBarfs. And they seem to do a decent business. The French can be quite weird at times…
Welcome to the Pacific Northwet Coast, PZ.
Looks like the high pressure system is going to lock in starting Wednesday. Hope that isn’t giving anything away, lauram.
Next time, come on up and see B.C. Don’t let that Super Natural stuff on the licence plates put you off. We’re one of the most secular places on the continent.
Well in the UK the only thing I’ve ever seen on a grocery cart (that’s “shopping trolley” to us, by the way) that wasn’t a dodgy wheel is a device that locks them all together until you put a coin into it… and you have to return the trolley to get the coin back. I guess we aren’t trusted.
Here in Vancouver, there is an intersection downtown that has 2 big Starbucks outlets diagonally opposite each other. They are both ALWAYS full.
Luckily for me an excellent independent coffee shop opened up right next to my work last year. Mmmm, paninis. Mmmm.
Oh yeah? We’ve got a Starbucks INSIDE THE CUPHOLDER of a shopping cart in a Starbucks. Even better, they’re both the same Starbucks. Not only do we have an infinite number of Starbuckses, we’ve got an infinite number of cupholders.
And yes, it’s turtles all the way down. And all the way up.
Beat that!
Not enough room for shopping carts in New York, though my old office tower had 2 Starbucks on location.
Safeway I would guess. They are actually a safe bet and the Starbucks is open early.
Beer with your art festival? People from England think they are so bloody superior!
In Portland, you can have microbrew beer with your movie and microbrew beer with your blues festival. There is even festivals dedicated to microbrews. PZ, when you get done with your venti latte, and being amazed by our penchment to enjoy a good frappicino as we shop, be sure to try out the local brews. You will never go back to stale Bud beer again.
blf,
I lived in Grenoble for awhile last year and we had a McDonald’s but no Starbucks. It *was* a little difficult not having any place where you could get a coffee to go. We had to SIT and ENJOY IT and maybe even TALK with our friends instead of bustling in and out and growling at the soccer mom who cut in line.
McDonald’s was always crazy busy, though. Maybe because they had free internet? We would see young couples on dates on Friday and Saturday night. This is not okay.
I have never seen grocery carts with cup holders here in MA.
Forget Starbucks. If you can find Batdorf and Bronson anywhere, you’re in coffee heaven.
Around here, the carts have a coffee holder and a soda can holder. The coffee holder makes a very servicable cane holder, and the soda can holder comes in handy for (noisily) holding big honking keys if you forgot that you can’t actually fit the whole key chain into your pocket. It’s a small town, and no one drinks coffee while shopping. In fact, no one drinks anything while shopping. It just doesn’t take that long to go up and down 8 aisles. But we can use all the holders they can think up.
The local Hummer dealership is offering H2s with a Starbucks IN THE GLOVE COMPARTMENT. And all 253 cupholders have iPod docks.
I always thought Kroger was a Deep South thing, like Piggly Wiggly and Waffle House.
Kroger headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. They also own many other store names.
Waffle House is also all over the Midwest.
Kroger isn’t just a midwestern (or southern) chain. They must own at least a dozen grocery chains. All of those stores with Kroger products are owned by Kroger. It’s definitely one of the biggest grocery corporation in the country. The difference is that Kroger buys out local chains and then keeps the original names.
To #23 in Arizona…Fry’s Marketplace? Yep, another Kroger corp. store. I remember moving to AZ and being shocked to find out the local groceries were still essentially Kroger.
Still no cupholders at my Kroger’s in Michigan, though we do have a Starbucks.
Hmm. Lake Havasu City, Arizona. A resort city that the idiots on the council want to make a “retirement” community, but can’t figure out why a huge fracking lake next to it *might* mean that the people that show up in summer and on holidays are more likely to be 16-30 year olds who want to go topless, than 80 year olds who are scared of all them naked people. We have two Starbucks in town, one with the useless wifi they provide, but so does the McDonalds, also pay, but also at least two bars, one place selling teas and soup from Korea or something place, some place called Slotchskys, or how ever its spelled, and the main resort, all with wifi. And the Safeway I work at is both a) one of the places with a Starbucks and *has* cup holders.
Heck, I am willing to bet Kingman and what ever the other one that has a Safeway in it does too, and the only thing that makes them anything “more” than a hick town is their relative proximity to the state border and towns with casinos.
Just thought I would toss in my two cents. ;) lol
PZ, since you’re here and I just got back from Alaska, come by and say hello. Just look for the Space Needle, we’re two blocks away.
I live in Houston, Texas, where comedian Louis Black spied the Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks. Pull up the store-locator on the Starbucks website and plug in for Houston, Texas. You’ll see he’s not shitting you.
Me, I try to hit every local indy / non-corporate coffee house whenever I can until they go out of business.
BTW, the “Seattle’s Best” coffee shops in Borders Books are in fact owned by Starbucks. Different “brand”, but same corporate master.
My local Freethought meetup meets there (Borders Books @ Meyerland Plaza), and I want to bring my laptop to show off my favorite atheism blogs, including this one, but you have to have your service with T-Mobile, and I don’t.
“The grocery carts had cup-holders.”
Welcome to the West, PZ; we’re here, and we’re caffeinated.
I have never seen grocery carts with cup holders here in MA.
Hadley Stop and Shop. (Has a Dunkin Donuts, not a Starbucks.)
No Kroger’s around here that I know of, though.
I simply cannot understand the obsession with Starbucks.
I love coffee, but have been drinking it black since I was a kid, when my grandmother would fix us kids “coffee” made with about 3/4 cup of warm milk, sugar, and just enough coffee to turn the milk light brown and give it a hint of coffee flavor. From what I gather, many people prefer something like my grandmother’s concoction these days, and CALL it coffee.
I tried Starbucks ONCE, and while the black coffee was better than my coffee singles (coffee in a tea-bag), it cost $1.85, where my coffee is a little over 16 cents a cup, and is ready in about 2 minutes flat in the microwave, including prep time. If I go to the trouble of brewing a pot, the quality improves (over the coffee singles) and the price-per-cup goes down. Needless to say, I haven’t been back to Starbucks…
Two blocks away from the Space Needle covers 16 square blocks! Can you give me a little more of a hint?
#26: I’ve been to that intersection. It reminds me of the scene from “Best in Show” where a yuppie couple is talking about how they met: “We met in Starbucks – actually, I was in one Starbucks and she was in another one across the street.”
I’ve wondered why the good folks in Seattle, which decades ago had a purveyor of fine coffee located in their fine city, never were able to figure out when the local roaster sold out, switched to over-roasted cheap beans, and proceeded to simply muscle out all competition. The locals still seem to be loyal to what has become an uber-corporate example of what Starbucks originally was in opposition to. Seriously, leave your Folgers on the burner for two hours and you’ve got the Starbucks flavor of the moment. Huge difference from actual Arabica (the species, not the new FDA allowed definitions). I think the reason the devil-brewers have succeeded is their recognition that most people don’t like coffee, they like ice-cream, and the updating of their menus to match the purile interests of America’s mature children.
Zahri @ #16,
no problem with spills, since the coffee cups have lids with little holes in that you drink through. I suppose there’s a definite cultural difference at work here: where I now live (I’m a Brit living in Portland, Oregon which is about 3 hours drive south of Seattle) nobody thinks anything about picking up a coffee at Starbucks and wandering around other shops with it. I don’t think that would go down too well in Britain, but it’s been a few years since I’ve been back so I could be wrong about that.
And yes, around here every supermarket has a coffee shop inside it. Along with every bookshop. And carts, I mean trolleys, have cupholders…
oh, and just to really freak out the Brits not familiar with US customs, cars also have cupholders so that you can drink your Starbucks while you’re driving. I’m fairly convinced this is a major motivation for Americans driving automatics ;)
So….nobody in Britain drinks stuff and drives at the same time? Because the only other place I know to store drinks would be in between your legs, and I almost froze my dangly bits off the last time I tried that.
Hmmm, thinks… nope no cupholders in our car (Honda, made in Swindon (England)). If you open the glove compartment there are two little depressions on the inside of the door you sit a cup ON as you sit in the car looking at the [insert one of our many words for precipitation here]. Or since we are in Scotland to avoid freezing your extremities ;-)
As for warm beer, I say Hic! to that. I can’t even drink Guinness most places any more, it is all ‘Extra Cold’ so they can sell it to poseurs who don’t like the taste. Thank Pan we have a CAMRA listed pub to pop into here. They even have Erdinger Weissbrau on tap.
Peter
PZ, if you want to see some crazy stuff, stand at the corner of 6th & Pine in downtown seattle. There’s a starbucks right there. If you look down the street, you’ll see ANOTHER starbucks adjacent to the Pacific Place shopping center. Go inside the shopping center, and the Barnes & Noble has ANOTHER starbucks. If you go around to the back of the shopping center outside and across the street you’ll find yet ANOTHER starbucks down 7th off Pine. And just three blocks down Pine at Westlake you’ll find TWO ADDITIONAL starbucks.
Seattle:Starbucks::Minnesota:Lakes
JohnnieCanuck FCD (#24)
Looks like the high pressure system is going to lock in starting Wednesday. Hope that isn’t giving anything away, lauram.
Next time, come on up and see B.C. Don’t let that Super Natural stuff on the licence plates put you off. We’re one of the most secular places on the continent.
As a Seattle native, I will gladly trade BC’s “Super Natural” slogan for that of Washington State’s: “SayWA”.
autumn (#43) remarks (bold added):
Eh? What’s this? What damnfool thing has the FDA done now?
PZ – I sent you an e-mail with our super secret location.
There are better places to get coffee in Seattle than Starbucks. If you’re in the U district, it would be Allegro; in Ballard, it’s Java Bean; and in Queen Anne, Uptown Espresso rocks!
PZ,
Do you remember the intersection of 108th and 208th? Panther Lake Elementary school? Its still there. The other three corners have Starbucks. A standalone on the NW corner (in a strip mall) and supermarket based Starbucks on the NE and SE corners. I live one block south and brew my own coffee. I’m waiting for Starbucks to offer a franchise in my own one bedroom apartment.
The new downtown development is Kent Station. Pretty, designed to replace how seedy downtown Kent has become, it looks like any high capital investment in Southern California. Welcome to Valencia. The only bookstores left in Kent are either Christian or Used. With all the ethnic restaurants though, at least the food is better than when you were growing up.
Ken from Kent
I understand your position PZ. Midwestern, Small-town grocery stores are different than these big-city ones. My mom still lives in a small town in Iowa. A few years ago, when HyVee opened a new store she just refused to go in after her first visit. They had a bank in there! And a Chinese restaurant! Too much! Too much!
All this Starbucks hate reminds me of hipster posturing – “Yeah, well I hated them before they sold out!”
I mean, sure they’re the evil empire, but the dick measuring contest is a little much. Strip off the tight black jeans and mascara and calm down.
As a SoCal native who lived in Alexandria, VA for a couple of years, I noted that the metro DC area has a whole other style of rude drivers than we do. Over in the land of “the loop” drivers tend to park/drive in areas they’re not strictly supposed to; much more likely to drive in the breakdown lane when faced with backed-up traffic, which hardly ever happens out in the L.A. metro area. Over here in la-la land, they go faster generally and seem to cut you off way more often. Even when you’re in the #3 lane of the 405 and going 15 over the limit. Seeing how close they can cut it seems to be great sport for many. That was not such a problem in NoVa, but then, it WAS the mid 90’s.
Yup, and sticky, ruined merchandise, too. Another reason why working retail sucks! Brian Hertz (#47), I can only assume you never worked IN the shop! Cup holders and kids in the same cart = BAD idea, lids or no. You’d be shocked at how much coffee a determined 3 year old can shake out of those little holes!
I’ve seen (and patronized) a Starbucks inside a supermarket in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The big local supermarket chain here in western New York is Wegmans. Every one of their stores that I’ve seen has its own coffee bar and provides cup holders for those of us who want to self-caffeinate while we shop.
I personally like to get coffee at Wegmans to go with the lunch I pick up at the sushi bar. Sounds weird, but coffee really goes well with sweet sushi ginger.
Well, as I understand it Autumn, there is also more than one *style* of coffee too. Different regions and different levels of acidity, bitterness, etc. My niece, who works at a Starbucks has lamented on several occations about her inability to comprehend why it is though that 90% of the customers as for some India blend or something or other, which is like the most bitter of all of them, then try to blend it with flavorings, presumably to mellow it out again. Its kind of like buying the coffee they stated producing in cans, which mixed like 10% **good** Columbian with the worst tasting, but far more readily available Asian based coffees, in hopes no one would notice that the result tasted like vulcanized rubber. Of course, it doesn’t, if you add enough creamers and stuff to it, which I think where all more or less invented at the same time, to disguise how bad the coffee was. lol Seriously though. Apparently its possible to be a coffee expert the same as wine expert, but most of the stuff you see leave a Starbucks, or the wine section of a store, is going to be the equivalent of vina-de-toilete and is in what ever the equivalent is of a square box with a plastic bag in it. Its quite sad.