Well, maybe I just like well roasted beans. I like Starbucks; I can take my 18 ounce traveling cup in there and get it filled up for $1.60 - the usual price of a "tall". And I can (and sometimes do) sit in their overstuffed chairs for an hour or so and read. They do charge for their WiFi connection, though.

I once knew (to speak to) the guy who started Starbucks. He worked in a bean shop - maybe he was a partner - just off of First Avenue in Seattle, about a half block from the Federal Building where I worked, and I bought coffee there to take home. He took some beans up the hill to the Pike Place Market and talked a cafe owner there into letting him sell fresh ground and roasted coffee rather than the Maxwell House (or whatever) that came in the 50 pound bags. The lattes and other crap - and the "entrepreneur" that took Starbucks national and then international - came later, in the mid-1980s.