From the Salmon

Folks in Berkeley tend to be a little, shall we say, disapproving of big-name national franchises. We prefer our funky homegrown alternatives. My wife and I discovered this the hard way one evening a few years ago.  We were sitting outside a Starbucks on Center Street, talking and sipping coffee, when someone walked by and booed us. That’s right. Booed us.

Since then, the Starbucks Resistance Front has apparently upped the ante a bit:

An SUV driver battered his vehicle through the doors of the Starbucks at Solano and Colusa avenues Tuesday morning, scattering a dozen or more customers who leapt out of the way and jumped through open windows as he backed up and tried it again.

The Berkeley Daily Planet, July 29, 2005

After the second attempt to ram his way into the Starbucks, the driver turned the SUV around and sped off down the street, leaving behind wreckage, mayhem, and a front bumper with a license plate. As you can imagine, the driver was swiftly tracked down and apprehended by Berkeley police. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

But I think I’ll stick to the independent coffeehouses for now.