If you have recently visited Norwich, among other rapidly growing cities, you will notice that in the former shells of discount clothing emporiums there has been an explosion in the development of TransAtlantic Coffee Houses. This is no bad thing in the respect that if like me you happen to stumble into a job at 8.45 in the morning without any pretention of enjoying the Office bound job that you completely hate then salvation is at hand. The thought of ebony's favoured child washing around my mouth is only second to tasting what can be best described as drinking an ashtray in a local pub.
The last remark may perplex or even stumble you into thinking why an earth does someone who describes the coffee as being at best mediocre spend every lunch hour in a place that resembles a 1980's NBC set? Well it is honestly fun, from the Barrista's displaying a continual level of self-importance or completely misplacing your order due to the complicated self-imposed method of division of labour, its the place where 'nobody wants to know your name'. I first went in to the smaller one, another opened in May, in January and used the personal space that this provided me with to make several 'key' decisions in life. This was mainly to place empty mugs in a variety of positions giving you full visual effects of young attractive women bending over tables. (I made the last remark up on the basis that it makes me resemble some kind of Benny Hill impersonator).
Yet the key thing to this pseudu Friends existence is that you do not go into Starbucks for the Coffee and definately not the food - over priced and by most means underflavoured - but for the variety of Insurance workers that populate Starbucks-CGNU during their lunchtime. In Norwich we have the chess players, a game for those that have never forgotten the abysmal cartoon 'Dungeons & Dragons' but keep some vigil for Star Trek Next Generation bollocks, one has dark hair and looks Polish and the other dresses like he is going to a cheap Nightclub to pick up even cheaper woman (which he doesn't know are cheap) _ Style please remember it is not what you wear its how you wear it. The politics of envy may creep in and you are right because the servents at this place love them, but not I, not the person who writes. Even now they are planning to put 'no writers' underneath the sign that says 'no dogs'. But please remember it will be one that is hand spelt and states 'no righters', the technicality being that I am a playwrite and not a novelist, will they be that specific?
I am lucky in that no level of conversation is ever required by me in the process of ordering, they know it and any questions are merely rhetorical in concept. You may ask what do they look like? Are they beautiful? Well, the only way I can put it is that they will not be found shopping in Asda. The only downside to the most beautiful of them all is the propensity to sing Macy Grey numbers, but at least not Travis. Maybe I should talk about the coffee, but then this is Starbucks and as I said earlier you do not go there for the coffee.
It is not very Loud.
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An excellent opinion, I know it is not fashionable to admire McCompanies in the current No Logo climate but I resent Starbuck's corporatism a lot less than the Whitbread-owned Costa, for example. Maybe it's got something to do with the coffee, but the staff have a lot to do with it too in my opinion.
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Advantages: Heavenly taste, huge range of coffee (incl. soya milk varieties) and an atmosphere that oozes cool and sophistication Disadvantages: Can get packed in there, the foreign staff sometimes have a hard time conversing, and you need to be a millionaire to go regularly
Lara_King 09.02.2001 ·
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Review of Starbucks (London)
Advantages: Brilliant location, modern rooms, clean and friendly. Disadvantages: None I can really think of, if I had to mention something it'd be the pricey internet.
Jul 28th, 2000
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