Now, speaking as one who can't claim – and would go some considerable distance to deny – “an intimate experience with a barista” and couldn't distinguish a shade-grown, free-trade organic coffee bean from a turnip, I can't honestly say I feel Chairman Schultz's pain.Out here in the sticks, we're also a little less obsessed with the whole "urban chic" pantyless Hollywood starlet of the week deal.
Starbucks has always carried the aroma of a trumped-up exercise in lifestyle pedigree, hawking a faux pedantry over brews and beans, and overripe pseudo debates on the superiority of the Ethiopian product to its Moroccan congener.
They're beans, folks.
And anyone who actually thinks, despite the constant media bombardment, that Leonardo DiCaprio is more important than Leonardo DaVinci... would be regarded as some sort of village idiot.
Oh yeah... we're also perfectly happy to drink unhyphenated coffee.
Even though Tim Hortons may have begun earlier than most of them, it picked up some commercial propulsion and swelled its constituency by offering, so self-consciously, the opposite of what the newer coffee lounges stood for.It's that whole pretentious style over substance thing.
Putting an aerodynamic wing, or neon lighting on your Ford Focus... does not turn you into a Formula 1 driver. Drinking a four dollar cup of coffee and disparaging the Conservative government's lack of concern about world hunger... will not transform your "hot yoga" toned carcass into media darling Angelina Jolie.
And that, I suppose, is why we like it out here so much.
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NOTE:
We have to head into the Devil's Armpit (or Toronto as some of you may know it) later this morning.
Blogging today will be a little lighter than usual.
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LAST WORD: It's nice to be home...
A Toronto police officer's gun was shot off in the Entertainment District last night following a scuffle between two officers and a young man from eastern Ontario, police say.And...
Police allege that during the scuffle, the young man disarmed one of the officers and shot the pistol once. At one point, he pointed the gun at the officers.
A man in his 40s was shot dead on Yonge St. outside a busy strip club early today.**********
Toronto Police said the victim, whose identity is being withheld pending notification of family, was struck once by a slug and died at the scene outside the Brass Rail north of Wellesley St. at 1:16 a.m.
UPDATE: Two more dumbass killers nabbed
Apparently the victim was an innocent bystander.
Edward Paredes and Awet Zekarias, both 23 and both of Scarborough, are charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder.*