anything but starbucks

Before I moved to Portland, I maybe drank one cup of coffee every four or five days. After living here for six months, I told my mom I was always running out of money. She said to stop going to the bars. I said, "It's not the bars. It's the coffee shops!"

Oregon (and Portland in general) has some pretty amazing coffee selections. I tried a new one today called Nosh. It's at 2030 SE 7th. It's where Dragonfly Chai used to be. (I will never understand why businesses keep sprouting in the exact same location where other like businesses have failed.) The coffee was fair and it was a good price for a 16 oz latte. Plus I hear they have killer sandwiches.

With so many awesome independent coffee shops in Portland, it baffles me as to why someone would go Starbucks. Maybe because they're open earlier? But, if that's the case, there's probably a gas station or convenience store nearby with day old coffee that would still be leaps and bounds better than the crap they serve at Starbucks. Besides the fact that they are a horrible monopolizing chain that homogenizes culture, their coffee tastes like stinky ass. I read a good summarization of Starbucks recently: "It's still burnt beans and it tastes like shit. Roasting coffee may not be easy, but it isn't rocket science either." I also was disturbed to hear that people refer to coffee as Starbucks, like they refer to tissues as Kleenex. I would do this too but only to refer to rotten, day old, open-cup-left-beside-the-pisser-at-a-frat-house-occupied-by-drunken-boys-with- bad-aim tasting coffee.

But that's just my opinion.