Lileks: Of course we spend too much on coffee

News item: Starbucks is facing headwinds, which makes it sound as if great gusts are keeping people from entering the stores. Sales are down as consumers balk at prices. You pay that much for a coffee, you think they might be making it with gold and gasoline.

It’s a cranky boomer cliche to say, “You kids wouldn’t be poor if you stopped spending $8 on caffeinated milkshakes.” It’s also a cranky boomer cliche to make fun of the complex drinks with their European nomenclature and endless subclauses of ingredients — venti mocha latte flat white arpeggiated decaf espresso with two pumps of caramel with non-fat whipped oat milk — but, well, if the leather-upper composite footwear with recycled sustainable sole and ethically

sourced jute laces fits, wear it.

I’m not one of those people who say it’s bad burnt coffee. It’s not undrinkable, like the viscous inch of brown glurp you find on a hot plate in a tire shop. Even that can be resurrected with dilution, and yeah, I’ll have a cup. And I’ve drunk vending machine coffee, which is a liquid hologram of actual coffee.

The best cup of coffee I had this decade was an Americano in a Mexican hotel bar. The second best was gas station go-juice on a Minnesota morn in the summer in the middle of the state.

None of these coffees came with a lifestyle, a vibe or an ethos.

A Starbucks may be hip and modern, but it’s nothing like the old dime-store lunch counters, or highway diners. The old coffee-shop experience consisted of many people sitting at a counter, some staring ahead with impenetrable solitude, two people chatting while lazily poking at a piece of pie, one guy in a DeKalb hat chatting up the waitress.

Let’s not romanticize the coffee they served in the lunch counters, though. Those classic diner cups with the wide mouth meant it went cold faster than the career of a “Star Wars” sequel actor, and no matter how hot it arrived, you could toss it down in one gulp.

Another news item: Dunn Brothers may add 250 more stores. Hurrah for local! You wonder whether they’ll occupy newly emptied Starbucks. You pass a store one day, it’s a ‘Bucks — and wasn’t it a ‘Bou before it was a ‘Bucks? Now it’s not a ‘Bou or ‘Bucks but a Bros? That’ll be fine; we’ll adjust.

Last year I was sitting in a chain coffee shop in London with my daughter, jangly with the false energy that precedes a jet-lag collapse, and we struck up a conversation with the Americans at the next table. You do that 20-questions routine where you find out where they’re from and what brings them here.

We soon learned that we were all from Minnesota. She worked for a certain company. I knew the founder. We’d both been to his funeral. And there we were, sharing stories over a hot cup of coffee in a cozy nook on an August morning.

It’s the simple pleasure of coffee in a room full of your fellow humans. ‘Bucks or ‘Bou or Bros — does it really matter? It’s the so-called “third place” — neither home nor work. A public place where we tarry a while and watch the world float past, a little richer for the moment.