Ode to Starucks

Oh, Starbucks.

Without you, where would us poor New Yorker's be? Really. Where would the poor New Yorkers be? Because they are all in your stores, using your bathrooms and napping on your tables. And who can blame them, really? I am no different; I buy my coffee, I sit in a corner (preferably with an outlet) and type away on my expensive laptop, occasionally getting up to pee in the bathrooms provided. Starbucks, you are an oasis from the busyness of the city; a place for everyone with your free Wi-Fi network and no-brainer music. New York City seems to have missed the necessity of public restrooms, and as a result: the Starbucks houses have become, unofficially, New York's pooping grounds.

Indeed, as I sip my brown, hot liquid, and stare at the line that wraps around the circumference of the store: I am in awe that there is even a place for these people to go! If you didn't open your cold glass doors with open arms would all these people pee in the street? And where else could one see the diversity of social and economic classes all in one place? A line for the restroom at a Starbucks can have the head honcho of a major business in her power suit from Armani, and right behind her, there'd be a really dirty looking homeless person muttering to themselves. It's a beautiful thing, those bathroom lines, everyone has to pee regardless of class or upbringing!

And, don't think I am not grateful for saying this, but your loos sure live up to every stereotype a public restroom could have! The rolls of wet toilet paper on the floor, the urine sprayed on, around and all over the toilet (and sometimes the sink!), the sometimes flickering fluorescent light that makes me feel like I walked onto the set of an amateur porn film, and the ever necessary "Life's a Cunt" carved into the wall above the mirror (if there even is a mirror). Indeed, I am now so accustomed to the wave of nausea I get when I open one of your Water Closet doors, that when I don't get a plume of hot poop smell in the face, I consider myself lucky.

I don't blame you as a chain for your rancid smelling restrooms, Starbucks. Seriously, I love you guys. You're everywhere! You're in alley ways, on busy corners, in cellars and lofts! You're on college campuses and in bookstores! If ever I'm out and about and need to wee, I think: Starbucks! They won't ask! They won't judge! Bathroom? Why, right over there, Miss! And, with a grin of excitement I stomp over to the lavatory and pinch my nose and squat (because if I sit on that toilet I may pick up a strain of Hepatitis) and praise your name as I release all of the pressures of life.

If I could, I would get New York City to open public restrooms. I would open a whole branch of the sanitation department whose sole purpose would be to clean these crap-houses. I would have a public restroom every other block, with ample signs to indicate where the next one was. My only worry, Starbucks, is that you'd lose the precious patronage of all the saps that need to be sapped for cash to buy a Caramel Macchiato from you. I don't wish you ill. I only wish, that since we don't live in a Utopian society full of flushing toilets everywhere, you'd take more pity on us poor New Yorkers and keep those bathrooms cleaner. Until then, I will continue to buy my weight in lattes from you, and continue to pee my caffeine investment in to your lavatories, albeit with a shirt over my face.

Your "Number 1" fan,

Natalie