Starbucks and the Vending Machine

Oh, dear. Some folks, well one person, is worried that his change from vending machine coffee to Starbucks is part of a slippery slope to snobbishness. So, I don't know if this should reassure TSO or if it should make him want to put on some faster skis, since the ones he has aren't doing it. So I will be blunt:

If you are drinking Starbucks, you are still drinking coffee out of the vending machine, you are just paying too much for it.

Now, in spite of the fact that I recommend to everyone I meet in California that they consider the beauty and charm of Ohio, I have never been there, so it is entirely possible that there is nothing better than Starbucks in the state, but I doubt it. In the good old pre-Starbucks days I even found good espresso in Tennessee (and, yes, I did have an espresso machine, a coffee grinder, and a couple of pounds of beans in the car for those places where they were not up to standards). You had to look hard for it, and you sometimes had to suspend your disbelief (like the "antiques" store/ice cream shop with the super friendly servers in Nashville that made an incredible espresso).

So, my recommendation is to really take the plunge and find some little caffe, somewhere that makes a proper espresso (drip coffee is bad for the stomach and bad for the nerves) and stick to it.

Speaking of coffee, the other night in North Beach there was a party of four in front of me with foreign accents (one man sounded Jersey, the women may have been Southernesses). The fellow with the Jersey accent ordered four decaf "cappuccinoes". This was at night, mind you.

Later, of course, they climbed into a grotesquely large rental limo. Of course it all fit: cappuccino after 10am, decaf, tacky limo.

So, there you have it. Three rules that are fine rules:

1. No cappuccino after 10am.
2. Decaf coffee is a perversion and an abomination.
3. Don't ride in large, tacky limos. You will be confused for nineteen year old high school students from Hayward out on prom night.