Anonymity and Hot Chocolate

I have gone to the same Starbucks a couple of times every week for years, and yet they still ask for my name whenever I show up as if they had never seen me before. The impersonality of the place is awesome, and one of its greatest attractions. I can place myself down on a generic padded chair and be ignored for hours on end. No, ‘Would you like another coffee?’, and definitely no subtle hints to fuck off. Friends are still dismayed by my utter lack of hipness in café choice, but I don’t need a double shot of pretension in my drink. What I need is to be left alone and treated as another piece of furniture, which is exactly the service my ambivalent neighbourhood baristas dutifully provide for me when I present myself for an hour of reading at 5:30 on a Monday afternoon.

The pressure of jobs in marketing or public relations fade into oblivion as customers are soothed by the semi-alternative music aired over Starbucks radio; the sounds of Bob Dylan, or The Cult, or even Sixto Rodriguez. I might retreat to my headphones for a dose of Dinosaur Jr., and enjoy the irony of listening to slacker rock in a multinational coffee house chain. Most others appear happy to let the Starbucks music stand educate them.

In my travels, Starbucks provides a reassuring familiarity in places where I don’t know a soul, recognize a single street corner or possess knowledge of public landmarks of any kind. It is a beacon of comfort in a sea of cold faces for whom I hold no interest. Does that not have some value? For every time I am willing to step out into the unknown world and take a chance, there is another that I simply want to retreat to something I know.

I am sure many Melburnians will scoff over their Chai Lattes as they read this, no doubt listening to the new Dirty Projectors album and looking out onto a Fitzroy street front of skinny jeans and angular fringes, but hopefully they will not choke mid-sip as their throats swell with smugness.