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"There was a time, not so long ago, when coffee in New York was just coffee. You drank it black with two sugars served in a blue Greek-diner cup. It was in your hand on the Penn Station platform when the Daily News screamed FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD. You watched it go cold in your Upper West Side breakfast nook after the ’87 stock-market crash left you praying that your daughter wasn’t too attached to the pool in Southampton. And you drank it by the thermosful, with a splash from the flask, on frozen Sundays at the Meadowlands with your dad. Back then, coffee was just part of your New York life. It kept you functioning the morning after a late night, whether you were soothing a crabby baby or entertaining an insatiable Lower East Side ingenue.

Then came Starbucks. Suddenly, coffee was fetish elixir rather than morning fuel. Like wine, there were things to be learned: Ethiopian varietals, French presses, espresso macchiatos, and something called a Venti. This coffee was strong, too—quaffing a Grande or three a day marked you as a card-carrying member of the overachieving class. With its velvet couches, pleasantly bland mix CDs, and Wi-Fi, Starbucks became a living room away from home for the Norah Jones set and a mobile office for would-be screenwriters. No longer did you pick up a cup of joe on your way to work. Now you ordered a $4.81 skim-no-whip mocha Valencia and spent the afternoon hammering out the chase scene for your future Oscar-winning Miramax project in the public library–slash–pickup joint of the new century. The baristas gave you another reason to stick around. The guys were damp-haired brooding-musician types. The women, shopgirls before Steve Martin coined the term—shy, geeky-hot chicks who knew how to foam your 2 percent milk just the way you liked it."

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Average Joe

New York is suddenly brimming with Dunkin’ Donuts stores. And with a Starbucks on every corner, a coffee class war is brewing.

* By Stephen Rodrick
* Published Nov 20, 2005