One of the additions to Kensington in this development has been a Starbucks. I'm not a fan of coffee in general though I spent plenty of my high school years hanging out at Just Java or Café de Café or at my first job at Pronto Café. Starbucks has a knack for building stores adjacent, across the street, or diagonal across the street from established coffee shops. In my neighborhood, they moved in diagonal from San Diego Coffee Company at Kensington, the new name of the shop since Kensington Coffee couldn't compete. I've almost gotten over the Starbuck's...I know a lot of people like their standards and consistency, it's always busy, and non-customers enjoy the patio they've built. I won't, however, get over the traffic it's created on the corner, especially the assholes in SUVs who park in the red zone (because they are excluded from laws), then cut me off as I'm making my left turn onto Adams from Marlborough.
Regretfully, my problems may be minimized at someone else's expense. The people of Normal Heights will soon have their own Starbucks, conveniently (and I say that with the most sarcasm possible) diagonal from Lestat's. They booted out the Mexican produce market and have redisgned the corner. Now Jerry Sanders can get his coffee in Kensington without being harassed by the people from the other side of the 15 bridge; they can have their own hideous Starbucks to go to.
How they allowed this design to pass, I will never know. But just another step in the wrong direction.
3 comments:
Word up! It is easier than you think to patronize your local coffee shop. Let's all give Starbuck's the big F U that they deserve. Rosemary for Mayor.
LESTATS has added new hardwood flooring, Diedrich's brand coffees,
gift cards and a patio with firepits and cool statues with wrought iron fencing, so Starbucks is sterile, boring and oh so unsavory to the folks I know.
LESTATS www.lestats.com/calendar HAS MUSIC EVERY NITE, TOO!
thanks rose
Here in Iowa we have similar things going on: a nice house in our historic district going for over 200,000$. It's a nice place, but who is going to live in the neighborhood on that living scale? The place has been vaccant for at least a year, when I began walking the near downtown area.
At the same time, a local builder has 3,000 homes empty in our area: the capital of Iowa, a pretty small town. That's just one builder, too.
Our local downtown Starbucks now has a no smoking area completely surrounding it. Meantime, one woman, a "homeless" person, goes through the trash by Starbucks. She gets leftovers from the trash...when she can. But, she is kicked out of this open space, which is actually owned by Starbucks and the city.
A favorite coffee shop here is Mars Cafe. They have student art displayed and local coffee shop musicians in most nights. Plus! They don't gripe if someone brings in a sandwich from down the street.
Mars is on the internet, too, if ya wanna look.
Nice site, by the way!
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