Looking for an alternative to the big green coffee-house machine?

[marmar]

This website has listings of non-Starbucks alternative coffee houses when you type in your zip code:

http://www.delocator.net/

[Lautremont]

1. Great! Thanks.

Most people will already know this about their own areas, but I can see it being a nice thing to check before going on a trip. And they'll have a Canadian version up soon, looks like!

[SidDithers]

6. They don't really need a Canadian version, do they?...

Sid

[Lautremont]

7. Around here, every Timmy's has like a half-hour queue up to the counter,

and the drive-thru's no better!

[El Pinko]

2. All this time, I thought the store was a good place to get coffee.

Make it at home - they have these things called Thermoses. It costs a fraction of Starschmucks or other coffee houses.

[alfredo]

3. There's only a place to add, no place to show they have shut down,

or moved.

[NRaleighLiberal]

4. I actually buy green beans from sweet maria's, roast them myself,

and make the best coffee I've ever had. I roast in a whirly pop popcorn popper on my deck on a coleman stove. Green beans around 5.00 per pound, popcorn popper about 30.00. Great way to spend a mild evening on the deck, roasting away and thinking of not spending money at Starbuck!

[agent46]

5. Real Coffee Houses and Cafes - Community Hearths

Traditionally, coffee houses and public houses have been inexpensive public gathering places for artists, writers, political and social outsiders, students and activist reformers. Over the last thirty years or so, I've watched the corporate business model gradually marginalize the cultural and community function of locally owned and operated coffee houses and cafes as gathering centers.

Now it's all about "Gotta-have-my-daily-crappy-cap-lat-double-squat-whatever!" (People rarely realize how programed we all are by the constant barrage of advertising.) But the coffee-house is not a "place" anymore. It's a business franchise that profits because there's fewer real alternatives in the community. Now days the same people I referred to above, who serve vital functions for community advancement, gather a lot in cyberspace. The internet provides a nice kind of worldwide "telepathic" community, but it's really a whole new giant step away from the immediate needs and possibilities of activism and cultural change that come up organically in communities when local people are connecting physically - as in the local cafes. Important people somewhere up the market-development ladder are sure to understand this fact well.

So this delocator is great. I've always supported the local small owners in the community, especially the coffee houses where I keep one eye perpetually peeled for a return tide to a more vital community identity and connection. Corporate mono-culture has (intentionally I think) attempted to erase community cohesiveness in order to replace it with products. One definite way to push back is to support locally owned shops like the ones in the delocator. It's a great idea. Hey, remember what Arlo Guthrie said. "And friends, they may think it's a movement..."

It occurs to me now that it's not some mythical "return" to religious family values that people need so much as a tangible return to the more organic civic and community values that corporate developers and marketers have been at war with for a century now.

Thanks marmar

[marmar]

9. No problem....and welcome to DU!

:hi:

[wtmusic]

8. Nope, I love Starbucks.

The fact that they're big doesn't make their coffee taste any better or worse.

[marmar]

10. Other than a soy latte, with the 2/3 soy milk taking the bitterness out of the over-roasted beans...

.... I just don't get what's so good about the taste of Starbucks coffee.

[wtmusic]

11. Many would agree with you

but there's no doubt that most coffee roasters roast them longer since Starbucks came around.

Except for their French roast, which I agree is over-roasted, IMO their coffee is a great value. When I really want to treat myself I'll buy myself a pound of Jamaican Blue Mountain, which is the best coffee I've ever had.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_Blue_Mountain_Coffee

I get consistently good service at Starbucks and their shops are always comfortable and well-designed. Their union-busting antics are counterproductive, but the fact is that Starbucks baristas are paid competitively and they have a low turnover rate.

[BreweryYardRat]

12. Unfortunately, I'm too ashamed to go back to the best of my local shops,

I was at a really miserable point in my life and hit on the proprietor after we'd had a nice conversation about politics.

Yeah, I can be a real dumbass sometimes.