Originally uploaded by Captain Bonehead.
First a disclaimer: I have a bunch of friends that have worked, or are currently working, for Starbucks. I know they are a great company to work for, especially when you are pursuing some other venture – great benefits at a low hourly requirement, better than average pay, etc. I don’t hold them in any lower esteem for taking advantage of “the Man” 
However, I have been anti-Starbucks for a long time. I started drinking coffee in 1993, the spring semester of my freshman year at Belmont. I wandered down the street with some friends to hang out at this little coffee house to play cards, and that started the addiction. Soon a couple more shops opened up in the area, all local, all independent. There’s a vibe at a local coffee shop that you can’t match at a store-in-a-box type chain. At this point, Starbucks is a massive juggernaut, and local shops know that it’s hard to fight their brand recognition, so all they can hope to do is get established in a neighborhood before the giant takes over.
Within the last two weeks, another dear friend has fallen to the crush of the masses. It’s A Grind in Cool Springs has closed its doors. To be fair, IaG is a small franchise, but this place had personality. The owner was regularly behind the counter, and the staff knew the regulars by name. Andrea was just there two weeks ago, taking photos for a scrapbook of our dating and engagement. It was at IaG that we first started talking more intentionally – I asked her out for coffee, not knowing that she didn’t drink the stuff. It took two meetings there for me to figure it out, but we still went back occasionally out of nostalgia. I went regularly to drink a Steamroller – three shots of espresso in a large cup of dark roast coffee – when I had time before work, or as a break from the office.
So, in tribute to the fallen dead, here’s a couple of my favorite photos of Starbucks in action. The one above I grabbed at the Maryland Farms Starbucks when dropping Andrea off for a writer’s group meeting. The one below is from a couple of years ago, here at the Five Points Starbucks in Franklin. I love the irony of a delivery truck touting JFG Coffee (a local supermarket-quality coffee based in Knoxville, and a couple of steps above Folgers, et al), making a delivery at Starbucks.
Originally uploaded by Captain Bonehead.