You gotta love the Wawa... 26.02.09
Apparently there are over
200 Starbucks outlets in Manhattan alone. This is
perhaps not the most vital piece of information you
might ever pick up in your lifetime, but it is one of
the few things I did actually remember from the
prattlings of a tour guide on a New York city bus tour
last week.
The tour was one of those hop-on, hop off things that
takes you around or past many of the city’s interesting
places and for free you get the gems of wisdom of a
local tour guide telling you which apartment block
Madonna has a place in. Apparently she doesn’t stay
there much.
Oh yeah, and when I said free, I meant that Chad and the
bus driver Steve probably get paid by the company who
charge a significant amount of dollars for your ticket,
but they’ll still take your tips. In fact were told on
seven occasions between three blocks that these guys
share tips. |
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I felt like saying – here’s
a tip – shut your mouth about the tips and you might
actually get one.
The great thing about the hop on, hop off tour bus
though is that you can umm, hop off if Chad is getting
on your nerves and hop on to the next bus where
hopefully the next guy will be better.
He was. He not only encouraged us to try to look into
peoples’ apartments, he even had an idea of which ones
might not even have their blinds closed.
His name was Bill or Billy or Mack or Buddy, or
something like that, but he was funny and informative
and even pointed out cool things to take pictures of.
Of course you couldn’t take any pictures because they
had the damn bus wrapped in a big sheet of perspex that
was all scraped by the tree branches and traffic lights
and stuff, but people took them anyway.
Apparently the perspex has been put there during this
time of the year to stop the tourists from freezing to
death.
“Fifteen feet up and we have a whole different climate,”
Chad had told us, between asking for tips.
In fairness it was pretty cold and the one time that the
bus actually got to more than around ten miles an hour I
guess it would have been pretty nippy if that perspex
sheet hadn’t been on.
Then again, if you were cold you could always hop off
and go get yourself a nice cup of coffee. After all
there are over 200 Starbucks in and around Manhattan
alone.
I like coffee, but I’m not sure if I get the whole
Starbucks thing. I’m pretty sure since they have their
own secret language and all that it’s a kinda coffee for
snobs.
In Philadelphia, where I spent most of my recent
holiday, they have a convenience store called the Wawa.
There you can go in, pour your own coffee into small,
medium or large paper cups, go to the counter and pay.
The Wawa is class, it has doughnuts and sandwiches and
bagels and all sorts of stuff that people don’t need an
interpreter for.
In Starbucks though you can’t get a medium coffee.
That’s because they don’t have medium. They have ‘grande.’
They also don’t have small they have ‘tall’ and if you
want large you need to ask for ‘venti.’
It’s all very confusing unless you know the language.
The people who go there and love the fact that you can
sip your ‘venti frappuccino’ (that’s a large cold
coffee) on a sofa, all seem to know the language. |
“There’s a great spot if
you don’t want to go to Starbucks and pay their silly
prices,” Bill or Billy or Mack or Buddy told us as we
passed a wee restaurant place on the bus.
“You can get a cup of coffee there for 25c,” he added
and I had made a mental note to make sure he got a tip
when he added: “it’s the worst coffee in New York.”
Around about then I realised how easy it was the guys in
Philadelphia to come up with their slogan: “You gotta
hava Wawa.” For the same reason I realised, you gotta
love it too… |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
|
