Caffé italiano

Venice coffeeIt wasn’t until the fifth or sixth day in Italy when I noticed something… Since leaving LAX we hadn’t encountered a single Starbucks. No stores, no hotels “proud to exclusively serve Starbucks,” nothing in the airports or train stations.

Apparently, no rioting anarchists are needed to keep back cultural imperialism. There’s no Starbucks in Italy because there’s no way they can compete against non-burned, non-watery coffee that’s served in a real cup (instead of cardboard) for €1.20. I knew that coffee in Italy was good, but I didn’t expect just how thoroughly good it is everywhere. The espresso at the airport (a traditional home of caffinated swill) is just as terrific as the espresso at a local cafe. Even the espresso on the Eurostar was pretty good – just make sure to get it from the dining car and not the mobile cart.

There had to be some news on Starbucks versus Italy, for Cthulhu’s sake it’s a whole country without one, and what I turned up was all good-luck–you’ll-need-it-har-har. Back in 1998, CEO Howard Schultz delusionally claimed that “When talking to people in the coffee business in Italy there is an underground feeling–they won’t say this publicly–that they want us to come. We spur growth.” Today, free free to raise a steaming cup of schadenfreude as Schultz has a Captain Obvious moment:

Starbucks has lost its soul and does not know where to find it.

Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz lamented as much in a recent internal memo to his executives. He wrote that as the world’s largest specialty coffee company has expanded from fewer than 1,000 locations to about 13,000, its stores no longer even smell like coffee because of “flavor-locked packaging.”

His memo grieved, too, over the loss of “the romance and theatre” of traditional Italian espresso makers, which have been replaced by automatic machines. Schultz wrote that the new machines, while more efficient, block customers from watching as coffee drinks are made and sharing what he called an “intimate experience with the barista.”

“One of the results has been stores that no longer have the soul of the past,” he wrote. “Some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about our coffee.”

The leak of Schultz’s lost-our-soul memo has generated buzz on business pages. But it has occasioned only a shrug from the caffeine cognoscenti in Seattle, which has more coffee shops per capita than any other major U.S. city.

For most Seattleites, what Schultz called “the watering down of the Starbucks experience” is stale news – akin to reports that the Seattle SuperSonics are a losing NBA team or that Seattle winters are wet.

“Like, duh, I have felt that way about Starbucks for 10 years,” said Sean Seery, 36, an acupuncturist who sat one recent morning outside Victrola, a popular independent coffee shop on Seattle’s Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, can someone recommend a place in Glendale that can make a cappuccino like that one I had in Venice pictured above? Simulacrums will not be tolerated.

So long and thanks for all the pollen?

(Insert obligatory photo of Killer Bees sketch from vintage Saturday Night Live here) Bees get tired of working conditions and that tired “busy as a bee” nonsense, and drop out of society (and apparently the planet).

VISALIA, Calif., Feb. 23 — David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.

In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”

This story is weird by itself, but when chimpanzees are using spears, and colossal squids are on the advance, I’d be thinking about getting out of Dodge too.

Orange County mows another one down

Blimp hangar - Tustin, CA UCI just demolished their Gehry and now Tustin is going to tear down one of the most iconic buildings in all of Orange County: the old Tustin MCAS blimp hangar.

A historic wooden hangar that housed military blimps during World War II will be razed to make way for homes, businesses, parks and schools, Tustin city leaders decided this week.

The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to reject proposals for a motocross facility, a culinary complex, shops catering to the elderly and a futuristic airship building center. Each would have preserved the hangar. The proposals, city staff found and council members agreed, were neither economically viable nor properly planned.

“Overall, they were very poorly done,” Councilman Tony Kawashima said. “They were not specific and didn’t comply with our questions.”

Hangar 29 is one of two blimp shelters on the former Tustin Marine Corps Air Station that are on the National Register of Historic Places. The hangars, more than 1,000 feet long, 300 feet wide and 170 feet high, are the world’s largest all-wood buildings, according to Paul Freeman’s “Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields” website.

The hangars were built in 1942 for Navy blimps that prowled the Pacific coast for Japanese submarines. After World War II, the base was largely idle until the Korean War, when it became the Marine Corps’ primary West Coast helicopter base. The base was closed in 1999, and the military entered into an agreement with the city and Orange County to allow the redevelopment of the land and hangars. The second hangar, which is on county land, is being turned into a sports and entertainment complex.

The developers who were turned down by the Tustin council were angry Wednesday, saying the city never seriously considered their proposals.

Shaheen Sadeghi, who created the Lab and the Camp shopping centers in Costa Mesa, had proposed building within the hangar a culinary community, which would have included a cooking school, artisan food shops, gourmet cafes and a year-round farmers market. He said city officials should have collaborated with developers and the community to figure out the best use for the hangar.

The vote “was just an exercise. They probably had a very good idea they didn’t want to save the building and went through the motions,” he said.

“Orange County needs as many iconic buildings as possible, because we don’t have much of a history. Why tear it down and put up another retail center or office complex? I don’t think anyone needs us to build another Starbucks ”

He said that city estimates that refurbishing the hangar would cost tens of millions of dollars were short-sighted because an interesting redevelopment project would eventually bring much more sales tax revenue into city coffers.

Lance Brown of Aliso Viejo, one of the backers of the motocross facility, said he had lined up $42.5 million in financing from the motorcycle industry.

Council members “don’t have the sense that there are young people in their neighborhoods that need something to do,” he said. “I don’t think they ever had any intention of allowing a reuse of the hangar.”

City officials said that was untrue.

Apparently, a listing on the National Register of Historic Places doesn’t guarantee you anything.

Catching up on recent things

My alma mater UC Irvine has always had an odd image and self-esteem problem. Of course it doesn’t help when your campus has had problems with body snatchers, assault by radioactivity, a sign that cost more than some buildings, and a medical center under constant criminal investigation (a running joke was that the reason UCI wanted a law school was to supply enough lawyers for all the med center scandals, but even that fell through). The latest UCI news story? While other colleges are vying for starchitecture and name-brand buildings, UCI actually tears down their Gehry. Go anteaters!

Home again Garden Grove? Speaking of image problems and Orange County: Garden Grove (a name which I actively have to remember because its alternative Garbage Grove name is so widespread) still can’t figure out how to profit from being next to Disneyland. And no one is really hopeful about it.

The Antarctic kite skiers, who ran across those mysterious tracks awhile back, made it to the Pole Of Inaccessibility. A bust of Lenin which was left by a Soviet expedition 49 years ago is still sitting there – looking out over the ice.

Since no one in 2007 is really interested in Nine Inch Nails, I’m not surprised that the conspiracy-themed marketing for the new album is equally as empty. Let’s see how long it takes until it backfires into mooninite-scale pandemonium.

A worthier puzzle is the Perplex City game. Andy Darley of Middlesex worked out the clues to find the Cube and won the £100,000 prize. Game 2 will start soon (and maybe this time I’ll actually play the dang thing)

I’m always impressed with the images that come down via Astronomy Picture Of The Day, but February 8th’s picture of galaxy cluster Abell S0740 has stopped me dead in my tracks. The only feeling that’s similar was when I first saw the rings of Saturn through a telescope.

And finally, there is nothing I can add to this:

Norman Mailer created a film in the late 60s called MAIDSTONE. He played the part of a famous movie director who is considering a run for the presidency. Rip Torn played his potential assassin. At the end of filming, Rip appeared to get a little too far into his role, and he attacked Mailer on camera with a hammer, drawing blood. Mailer retaliated by viciously biting into Torn’s ear, drawing even more blood. This is the fight.

76 sign victory

76 Ball - La Brea & 6thWow! I can’t remember any previous situation where a corporation (especially one the size of ConocoPhillips) making a decision in favor of aesthetics.

Nearly one year after we launched our campaign asking ConocoPhillips to reconsider their “destroy all balls” policy towards the historic blue and orange Union 76 Ball gas station signs, the Texas energy giant announced to the Wall Street Journal that they have changed their course. Focus groups held last fall told them what nearly 3000 signers of the Save the 76 Ball petition have already told us: people love the 76 Balls, and don’t want them to disappear.

The 76 Balls that come off their poles are no longer being smashed or cut into pieces, but being preserved for donation to museums like the American Sign Museum, Petersen Automotive Museum, NASCAR Hall of Fame, Museum of Neon Art and perhaps even the Smithsonian! And a new type of 76 Ball, colored red rather than orange, will soon be installed at up to 100 gas stations in the west.

Congrats to everyone involved. (And check out the obligatory Union 76 Ball Flickr pool)