Starbucks Now Playing
By Barry Ritholtz - September 6th, 2009, 5:30PM
As I promised the missus I wouldn’t be tethered to the laptop via a mobile card, I have been hitting Starbucks each morning for some coffee and wireless.
Every now and again, a good song I am unfamiliar plays. I was getting up. walking tot he front, wheere there is a flat panel noting what was playing.
Then I noted buried on their (ATT) log in page. a section marked “Now Playing.” So I created my open pop up page by reducing the size of the page and keying on that part of their page:
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Suggestion for Starbucks: Why not make this a pop up for your wireless users? You include a link to iTunes, but I bet very few people really sees this . . .
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September 4th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
“three little birds” – great tune-
back to the grind next week BR- little sad summer’s over?
September 4th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
ahab
Yep, he won’t have near as much time to blog! :)
September 4th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
OT, sorta:
I’m finished with starbucks. I live in palo alto and recently took a day-trip to santa cruz, where I went to a proper donut shop for the first time in ages. Not a chain, but an independent shop. I’m not saying the donuts tasted significantly better, a donut is pretty much a donut, and actually Starbucks has good donuts. The little old man at the counter charged me 75 cents for an Old Fashioned, then ran over to the corner to turn the batch that was floating in the grease. From the posters on the wall to the yellow formica counters, nothing in that shop had changed since the 1970s. Providing exemplary, low-cost donuts to people was this man’s life’s work. There was no background music playing, no twirling stand of contemporary CD selections…not one inkling that Paul McCartney was out there, somewhere, committing new and lucrative artistic abominations. There were no coffee mugs for sale, no corporate logos, no ticker symbol on the NASDAQ and no Wi-Fi to access a real-time quote. No ephemera: no newspapers, no plastic landfill. There was literally nothing to do in that shop except eat your donut, drink your weak coffee, and collect your thoughts. It was the affirmation of a Present that must be enjoyed for what it is, as opposed to a blitzkrieg of disposable Products touting the tired meme of “Happiness through Consumption.” Paradoxically, i kept looking around for a t-shirt to buy, something that would remind me of the place when i returned home. No luck.
In Palo Alto, where land is gold and idiocy is the jackpot, folks literally line up around the block to pay $4 for a cupcake from a trendy new cupcake shop where the cupcakes are brought in on trucks. (We have two such stores.) The counter is staffed with attractive women, and the “philosophy” of the store is embossed on the wall. Would these consumers be happier at a proper donut shop, where the proprietor is a stooped old man and there is no expressly articulated philosophy? Probably not! The way today’s twentysomething Palo-Altan professional man-at-leisure chooses to dress like the opposite sex, it stands to reason that he would want to be “seen” with a $4 cupcake. Consumer culture suits him well! He likes having 500 different types of deodorant to choose from at his local Target: That allows him to make an optimal decision!
September 4th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Barry
iphone and shazam – its amazing – if you dont know it it takes a sample of the tune and sends it somewhere and send back the name of the song – its never not gotten a song for me – dont have to get up from your chair (cept to get more coffee) – available for blackberry I believe -plus having 3G and you can surf without Mrs BP knowing……
ID
September 4th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
bitplayer-
awesome post- the dives are always the best- great prices and usually good food- tough to find though for many because they live in all new surburban monotony- where – even if you pulled a Captain Kirk and beamed to a different suburb in a different city- all the stores and restaurants would be the same-
also- deodorant???
dude- that’s for girls
September 4th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
bitplayer: if you’re in San Jose, you want to go to Barefoot Coffee Roasters. The coffee is roasted every morning and handpressed (unlike Starbucks which uses a machine to do everything, not taking into account the bean). if you head up to SF, you want Blue Bottle or Ritual.
for those of you in New York, i really like Cafe Grumpy. if the new Stumptown is open (with their own local roastery), go there, best coffee EVER! Stumptown treats their espresso as SRS BSNSS.
go for a coffee shop whose baristas know what specific temperatures to roast different beans, that was roasted that very morning locally.
September 6th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
i seem to remember this post-
like deja vu all over again-
maybe just a glitch in the matrix-
i hope i am not tethered to giant slimy tubes while my machine masters harvest new humans
September 7th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Still this thread????
It seems like it has been on here for two straight weeks now and has gotten what?
6 comments???
Takeaway??? Nobody cares about Starbucks, their coffee, or their tunes… Unless, of course, they do, which means… (fill in the blanks)…
Then… go to sleep and STOP smelling the coffee…
Next!