New York: more Starbucks than corners

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Starbucks café. Photo: Sarai Campo

Going for a walk in New York is a luxury due to the immensity of buildings, cultural crossbreeding and the fact that you know you are in the city of the world per excellence. But taking a walk wears you out and from time to time it's impossible to follow the route without a good dose of energy.

There are many ways to cheer up and get your strength back to head to Central Park, cross Brooklyn Bridge or simply walk ahead, but the most common is a coffee at Starbucks. In New York there are more Starbucks than corners.

Starbucks is a well-known world café chain, but only in New York I have already tasted coffee at more than 20 different Starbucks cafés. There are small ones, big ones, homey ones, minimalist ones… but all of them have a common point: they are always crowded and all of them offer the same to the client.

In the months I've spent here I have already chosen my favourite, and I don't hesitate to ask for a 'tall latte' Starbucks waiters Peter or Mary friendly serve at the Starbucks near my Brooklyn house.

That waiters are apathetic and don't pay attention to the client is just one of those nonsense myths. All the waiters wearing a black cap and green apron friendly welcome the client and always say goodbye wishing you have a good day. Set phrase, but better than a bad face and a dry goodbye, isn't it?

Yesterday the café in the Smith Street of Brooklyn organised an interesting seminar on coffee. It was an interesting tasting of coffees from all over the world. As expert sommeliers advised, we compared coffee with dry fruits, chocolate and fruits that made us see the nuances and aromas of the intense Costa Rican, Colombian and Puerto Rican coffees more clearly.

Interesting and familiar. It's funny that the café chain that is famous for being a globalising and exploiting multinational manages to make the client feel back home.

Drinking a coffee is not a mere trifle, adding taxes, something more than $3, but it gives you the "license" to spend the afternoon or even the whole day sitting on one of those sofas reading, chatting or using the wi-fi connection, something all clients appreciate, especially those who need the net to work.

The waiters that serve me a hot coffee every day start to know me and ask me why I spend so many hours with my computer. Maybe one day I will tell them I'm a net pirate that instead of buying Starbucks' connection card "catches" other cordless nets to connect to for hours and hours.

As you can see, the hundreds of Starbucks spread around the city are just part of the atrezzo and personality of the city. As you can see, the theory of the XXL City is confirmed once again. Mew York has over 270 Starbucks around the city and employs over 1,000 people every year to wear the black cap and green apron and serve clients.

This time under the influence of caffeine, this is New York.