Starbucks brings us up to date with Civilization
Taken 17:09, 24/01/2008
Panoramic photo by
Jeffrey Martin
Google EarthWhat, then, is exactly wrong with Starbucks' arrival in Prague? It's just another cafe among hundreds is the facile answer, and the wrong one of course. Just as American citizens have more weight on their shoulders for the state of global affairs than say a Moldavian citizen, Starbucks strikes a chord with everyone. It's a symbol of something far greater than just coffee that's roasted too dark. It's the neo imperialism. It's McDonalds. This Starbucks on Malostranske Namesti might not be as momentous as the McDonalds in Moscow, but it's on the same track. Prague is not that wild place anymore. You can't buy a house for pennies or have a different supermodel girlfriend for every day of the week. You can't buy ten beers for your local equivalent of one (with a few exceptions). Yes, Prague is part of Western Europe now.
As with other fashionable things that have swept through this land - communism, plastic windows, and suburbs - Starbucks is arriving on the wrong side of the hump, just a bit too late. Just at the moment it's becoming uncool in other places, they arrive here, hoping for some last residual vapors of coolness among people who haven't heard yet.
To top it all off, let's remember the location of this the very first Starbucks in Prague (and all of so-called Central Europe at that): in the same location as Malostranska Kavarna, a centuries-old cafe that closed just a few years ago to make way for a fancy restaurant. Oh, the irony.
I'd rather not be repulsed at this new arrival in town, but I am. The whole world is now a little bit more homogenous now, and we all lose a little bit. Yes, maybe I can buy decaf whole beans now, but it just isn't worth it.
Like with everything else here in Bohemia, we know that these new imperialists will one day leave, like the Russians, and the Germans before that, and so on. Look at <
