Starbucks announces plans to open it’s first cafe in Paris and the locals are suspicious.
“It’s an absurd idea,” said Jean-Paul Bedel, a regular at the cafe. “The whole point about cafes in France is that you can sit over a coffee as long as you like, read the papers … taking away a coffee in a Styrofoam cup is anathema, unthinkable. It’s the kind of thing you’d only think of doing at a railway station.”
Any bets as to how long it lasts before being set on fire?
I hate Starbucks as much as the next guy, but they don’t actually use Styrofoam cups. This must of course be a Metaphorical Styrofoam Cup. Down with mass production and bourgeois capitalistic java! Ahem. Mais oui. Word.
This issue, it would seem, gets revisited endlessly, to no avail. “Die Kulturindustrie,” as Adorno put it, cultural imperialism, culture-debasing capitalism, American cultural hegemony, American boorishness, insensitivity and commercial cretinism–the list goes on, ad infinitum. But none of it matters. Nor does it matter, or will it matter, whether or not some unshowered, authenticity-enamored Frenchmen sets the Starbucks on fire. For they will have insurance, which operates in France no differently than elsewhere in the industrialized world. France may be clinging defensively to its cultural heritage, but 2 + 2 = 4 there no differently than elsewhere…and in a city of 10 million or more, there will be a sufficient customer base to keep the purveyors of burnt beans alive, probably without any detriment to the genuine Parisian cafes.
Oh please, what is the problem? I enjoy a petit cafe as much as the next person but there is always room for a Starbucks coffee when you are on the run – as well! Mark my words – Parisiens will soon be jostling in line for their vanilla lattes. And wow, what a novel concept, a Parisien cafe where you can sit and enjoy a coffee without choking on someone else’s Camel cigarette smoke – I say hurray for progress!
I live in Paris, and I am sure that Starbucks will be very successful here. Though one of the charming things about Paris is that you can sit in a cafe all day and read your paper, there are people here that have to work and would like a good cup of coffe or a blended drink and not have to wait an hour for it. I am planning on attending the opening of Starbucks and I will make a site with pictures of the event.
http://www.barney.gonzaga.edu/~aklein/starbucks.html
As someone who lives in Paris and has to drink the less than gourmet coffee here, I am thrilled to pieces that Starbucks is open for business and I no longer have to deal with the arrogant waiters at passé cafés such as Deux Magots. + I can sit in the cozy chairs that far surpass the uncomfortable chairs in French cafés and read the newspaper as long as I please.Hooray Starbucks.