I don't belong at Starbucks.

I don't belong at Starbucks because I am over 40, often wear colors other than jet black, and am decidedly unhip.

I don't belong at Starbucks because I don't own a cell phone and resent most people who do unless they are nine months pregnant, stranded on I-95 in an ice storm, or both.

I don't belong at Starbucks because I am one of those New York City Greenwich Village residents who moved here because I loved those real bongo-beater, poetry-reader coffee houses which are rapidly being replaced by Gap stores, CVSes, expensive eateries, and Starbucks, and join my neighbors in lamenting the demise of Edna St. Vincent Millay's Village, of John Reed's Village, of Bob Dylan's Village, of Abbie Hoffman's Village, of the Village as we never knew it and never will.

I don't belong at Starbucks because, while I do own a flannel shirt,I use it for things like raking leaves in October, not as a slacker fashion statement best worn in August while sipping overpriced coffee and pretending to write a screenplay on a laptop computer while listening to world-beat jazz at Starbucks.

I don't belong at Starbucks because, while I am a writer-poseur who lives in the trendy West Village and occasionally wears black, I am not pretending to write a screenplay and don't own a laptop. I am pretending to write personal essays in a rather underutilized and decidedly unhip Clairefontaine notebook with a bright blue flexible cover, best suited to someone too young to sip overpriced coffee at Starbucks.

I don't belong at Starbucks because I still don't quite understand why any cup of coffee -- even if the beans are grown a handful at a time once every seven years on the island of Mustique -- however fancified with Italian flavorings and special roasting techniques -- should cost $5.00.

I don't belong at Starbucks because the things I tend to order there are actually glorified milkshakes, and I am deluding myself into thinking that it's coffee and thus does not contain the 5,000 calories that it probably does.

I don't belong at Starbucks because there are actually two or three real bongo-beater, poetry-reader coffee houses still standing within a few blocks of my suddenly chic and desirable, filled with 20-year-old dotcom millionaires, rundown West Village block, where I could easily go and pay a lot less than $5.00 for a cup of plain old cappuccino made from coffee grown in a place I have heard of, without a splash of almond syrup, and wear purple without shame,and write in a notebook or not write at all, and not be annoyed by a lot of flannel shirt-sporting, cell-phone wielding screenplay writer wannabees, and be over forty and unhip more comfortably.

So why am I here, writing this, at Starbucks?

'Cause I love it.

**************************************************
©2001 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved. Distribution via hyperlink, e-mail, disk, print, broadcast or any other form is prohibited under U.S. copyright law without express permission of the author.
***************************************************
Carol L. Skolnick is a New York-based humorist, essayist, sometime poet and playwright whose work has appeared in a variety of print and online media, including The English Journal; Glamour; DM News; The Sun: A Magazine of Ideas; AKC Gazette; Paraview.com; and Writer Online. Her essay, "My Friend Sophia and the Boom-Boom-Boom" will appear in Kay Allenbaugh's collection, CHOCOLATE FOR A WOMAN'S DREAMS, in late 2001.

Visit Carol's web site http://www.eclecticspirituality.com/, home of The Spiritual Curmudgeon(tm) and the advice column, "Ask Swami Joan!(tm)"