The Daily gets it wrong
The Daily gets it wrong yet again on the subject of A2 coffeehouses and, more generally, what’s wrong with this town. In the “Best of Ann Arbor” vote (not to be confused with the Current’s “Best of Washtenaw County”), students picked Starbucks overwhelmingly for best coffeehouse. Rather than write a few polite words about the winner, as Daily writers did in just about every other category, Jess Piskor embarks on a searing broadside against the hopelessly bourgeois voters.
Ann Arbor is “graced with dozens of coffee shops,” he writes. We’ve pretty much demolished that canard here already, but here goes. Piskor offers three alternatives to Starbucks - one closes at 10 (this is probably the 25th occurrence of “close at 10″ in this weblog), in contrast to Starbucks’ 1 or 2 am closing time. And one is the Rendezvous, which we’ve cited for its smoke-choked atmosphere. We’ve never been to the third, Cafe Ambrosia, but at least it closes at midnight. The independents’ prices are not generally lower than those of the evil corporate invader, despite Piskor’s bizarre assertion that Starbucks charges more than $4 for a cup of coffee. Clearly, going to Starbucks is a reasonable survival move for caffeine-dependent Ann Arborites. But Piskor - who, tongue firmly out-of-cheek, uses the phrase “tragically banal” to describe Starbucks customers (great act, The Tragically Banal, if you’re into Canadian post-rock) - sees it as an act of sheeplike conformity.
Bashing Starbucks is so late 90’s. Even the New York Press (we think) put hating Starbucks into the “overrated” column in a recent overrated/underrated list. And the Starbucks fixation misses the problems with Ann Arbor that are more pressing than corporate coffeehouses on a few corners - just about every other problem, in fact.
Oh, and those “corporately trained robot employees”? Even the part-timers get health insurance.
More on the rest of “Best of Ann Arbor” later.