The Low Countries
It's taken an army of urban planners, county commissioners and city council people to build and maintain Riverside County's position as SoCal's Least Fashionable County. Granted it's not that difficult surrounded on three sides by fabbo-glam glitz-ball neighbors like San Diego, LA and OC.

Still, it takes work. We've got miles and miles of unchecked sprawl in every direction. Giagantic new housing tracts, each one indistinguishable from the next, edged up against 100-year old neighborhoods of falling-down houses that look like they were specifically built for very small people with very large crack addictions.

We gladly accept all the smog from our neighboring counties, lovingly collecting it within the ring of mountains that surround us, breathing it deep into our compromised lungs, happy and secure in the knowledge that we deserve their exhaust fumes. We're Riverside. Spill-over is what we do.

But despite all this, despite the meth labs and the orange air and the freeways that don't go anywhere, we have still failed to keep Starbucks away.

There was a time when I was but a lad, knee high to an elephant's eye (that's how that saying goes, isn't it?), sweating to death in one of Riverside's many lovely parcs des trailers, when a flashy retail-service chain like Starbucks wouldn't be caught dead out here. I guess when the same dumpy 3 bedroom pre-fab houses that used to go for $80,000 are going for $350,000, you have to expect some kind of outside attention to leak in.

Starbucks is here now. And as all of you know by now, once Starbucks invades a host region, it is only a matter of time before it divides and multiplies until the infection is systemic. It's like AIDS, but with foam and chocolate shavings.

I'll be honest, I know very little about what happens inside a Starbucks. Pops doesn't drink coffee. I drank tea for a while, but that's only because the hotel we stayed at in London offered it free with your 3-day old croissant for breakfast. Hot drinks and ADHD do not mix. I can be somewhat... er... impatient, I guess you'd say. I'm worried that you can only scald off your taste buds so many times before they stop working altogether.

Plus, I'm worried what might happen if I ever decided to kidnap someone. See, when you kidnap someone, you can't leave the house. If I became a regular Starbucks goer, I'd be forced to brew my own coffee at home while I watched over my victim, waiting for the ransom demand to be complied with.

I think we all know what happens when you mix kidnapping with a piping hot pot of freshly brewed coffee. Who gets the scalding liquid thrown in their face? That's right: the poor innocent kidnapper. Every single time. Meanwhile the plucky kidnapee makes a mad screaming dash for the basement window and shimmies her way to freedom while I'm trying to keep my flesh from falling off my skull.

No, it's just not worth the risk.

I would have preferred it if we had been able to keep the plain block-lettered green Starbucks signs beyond the mountains, safely behind the Orange Curtain where they belong.

Maybe I'm just being naïve. I've seen enough movies and TV shows to know that the kidnapping victim always finds a way to throw boiling liquid into your face. We do eat a lot of ramen out here.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 4.6


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 11:28 AM