Baby’s First Frappaccino

Steve Stajich

Mirror Contributing Writer 

   Woodstock 99 was completely off my radar until I saw the TV reports on the bonfires. With no knowledge of the event to context those images, my hip-o-meter was instantly replaced with what you might call “The Voice of Dad”: “What bumblebee got into their shorts?” 
   Many of us strive to stay current as best we can. Seasoned parents do it to keep the channels of communication open with their kids. My mother once dedicated an entire afternoon to listening to my Jimi Hendrix albums by herself. She wanted to understand what the “all the hubbub” was about. It worked. We argued about many things, but she never disagreed that Hendrix was “unique.” That’s what she said about his death. “Choked on his own vomit, huh? Well, that is unique.”
   But it’s often impossible to avoid feeling left out of the cultural big picture. Right now, there’s something going on with vests. Not the kind you’d see on Bob Cratchit in a medium budget production of “A Christmas Carol,” but the kind worn by Navy SeaBees and prisoners cleaning the freeway. I won’t be getting one, but I am ready when the tool belt fad hits. 
   All of this is meant to frame the fact that it wasn’t until last week that I actually sat down in a Starbucks and drank my first Frappaccino. I probably had a free sample years ago at some Oktoberfest, then forgot about it in all the excitement over microwave popcorn. I do remember my first free sample of Froot Loops. The taste was an achievement, but the color of Froot Loops was a major event in the evolution of food dye. I’m not sure where that technology has taken us, but check out Harold Green’s hair on the Channel 7 News. 
   One reason I’ve never had a Frappaccino is that the entire coffee store phenomenon never pulled me into its vortex. I worked in Seattle during the late 80s and I can boast that I drank Starbucks before they’d even formulated their plans for world conquest. At that time, Starbucks was part of a larger Seattle culture that wove together continuous rainfall, grunge rock, mountaineering clothes, suicide, and strong coffee. Once you figured out the sequencing of those elements, you could live in Seattle. 
   Perhaps the most touching expression of the yearning to be aware comes when you visit brand-new parents. Exhausted, and surrounded by huge orange and yellow Fisher Price toys, a new Mom or Dad can be heard desperately trying to join an intelligent conversation about rap-metal music or the “Blair Witch” website. These scenes always progress to a heated argument about Adam Sandler (“But you think the 3 Stooges are funny--?”) followed by the sanguine promise “We’re going to rent ‘The Matrix’ as soon as it comes out on tape.” 
   But when I landed in Santa Monica, I stopped hearing the siren call of the Starbuck’s mermaid. Or is she supposed to be Synapsia, Goddess of Over The Counter Stimulants? Women apparently don’t have a problem with an association between a piping hot cup of coffee and a nude nymph. My reading is, “If this beautiful maiden presented herself, you’d want to be wide awake for what came next. Better coffee-up, Chief!”
   Frappaccino must be ingested within the parameters of the Frappaccino lifestyle. So that meant waltzing down to the coffee store in the fat middle of a weekday. I left the house at 3:20 pm on a Thursday and headed toward one of the Starbucks on Main. There’re two of them on Main Street since the Mental Alertness Act of 1995 provides that no two adjoining coffee places can be more than three blocks apart. Except in Florida, where it’s legal to carry your own concealed coffee anywhere you like. 
   I expected the place to be full of younger people who might reveal more to me about how one becomes free on Thursday afternoon to sit in a coffee store. But every single customer at the time of my visit was 35 plus. There was one guy my age who walked through the door with his mother. I thought, “Man, he’s going to kill her! He’ll make her drink a jumbo cup of Brazilian Bullet Brew and when that caffeine hits her 78 year-old ticker, Mr. Trust Funder’s slot machine will go ding ding ding.” They left with Mom safely grasping a tiny paper cup in her hands. 
   But what of my Frappaccino? Well, as many of you know, it comes over the counter cold and taunting with a huge dollop of whipped cream shielded by a clear plastic dome. There is a certain amount of intrigue with Frappaccino derived solely from that Deep Space Nine Zero Gravity AstroCup it comes in. While the napkins are made from recycled fibers, those Frappaccino cups are a tribute to injection-molded plastic and the American Way. I didn’t see a recycling bin for them, so I took mine home and made a grow light out of it. 
   Then there are the drinking straws: they’re about a half an inch in diameter. It’s essentially a java bazooka. This is a beverage delivery system with torque. That straw won’t allow you to ingest less than 10 ounces per second. Your first big mouthful is a kind of temperature inversion bungee jump for your head, followed by the mandatory buzz of the coffee ingredients. 
   In fact, despite the relaxing Ikea Meets Pee Wee Herman interiors, everything in Starbucks is oriented toward buzz. The food items are either chocolate or sugar-intensive and the smallest coffee cup is a “Tall.” Even the fruit drinks seem charged with some kind of pink electricity. Ironically, the music on the house system is all laid back. Old doo wop and rhythm and blues. The consulting physician must have warned “Anything harder than Bruce Hornsby with all this caffeine, you’re gonna have Attica on your hands.”
   Frappacino is pretty much Yoohoo with attitude. But it isn’t the beverages that have caused a small revolution in American life; it’s the fact that going to purchase them has become a real event in the American day. And for many in Santa Monica, it might be the event in the American day. How did that happen?
   Historically, there’s always been a hangout somewhere. In the fifties, it was the burger joint, in the sixties, it was the beatnik coffeehouse, in the seventies, it was my sister’s apartment in Milwaukee. OK, that’s the “Voice Of Dad” speaking again. But at any given time, pop culture needs to provide a “hang.” Starbucks and its clones are wise to this. That’s why there are overstuffed chairs and newspapers awaiting the customers. With some coffee spots now offering hi-speed Internet access, I can imagine the introduction of showers and counseling services soon. 
   There appears to be a demographic curve to coffee outlet clientele. Starbucks serves the 30 plus professional contingent, the 40 plus “spec script” contingent, and the 50 plus “talking to myself since Pete Wilson cut off my Thorazine” contingent. The Coffee Bean skews younger, and its patio looks like the casting lounge for a new series on USA Network about sexy detectives who work with a dog. There is a lot of intensity, cigarettes and cell phones on that patio. These are people with lives so jam-packed, they barely have time to sit for two hours in the middle of the day sipping coffee. 
   Is all this coffee energy moving in a positive direction? While I sat with my drink, I was framed by two women on one side and two couples on the other. The two women were having an increasingly contentious discussion about their business venture. The couples were haggling loudly about the stimulation levels of tea and coffee. Somehow that led to a debate about Meg Ryan movies. This caffeine wasn’t bringing tranquillity, it was making everybody cranky the way a bag of McDonald’s French fries never would. 
   However, people who are comfortable spending the afternoon in a Starbucks would never be caught dead goofing in a fast food outlet. Those places are plastic, fake, literally run by clowns. Coffee stores may be a new cliche, but at least the place mats don’t have “Help Bunny Find His Carrot” puzzles printed on them. It’s just a tiny bit political, too. Any connection between the rain forest and a Whopper is probably a negative one involving chainsaws and fire. 
   And coffee stores would never hand out plastic movie tie-in toys, because hanging out there is a movie. Sure, it’s all playing in your head but what do you think those people tapping their laptops are writing? “Larry sat there, sucking the last of the whipped cream out of his 40-ounce ‘Caffzilla’ mega-tumbler. He was still without love, and now his hands were shaking. Was it the aching loneliness, or that foot-long chocolate biscotti he just polished off?” 
   If you’re without a philosophical take on time spent in a coffee store, don’t worry. One is provided on the napkins. At Starbucks they read “Extract the secrets of my soul, brewing, mine becomes yours.” Much heavier than “You deserve a break today,” but not as empowering as “Have it your way,” a Burger King slogan at the time Reagan was invading Granada. Who knows what other mighty island regimes we might have toppled, if only our boys had gotten stronger coffee?