[: neon :] NewEnglandOnlineNetwork

Two words for Starbucks: DON'T CLOSE!

It will certainly be an interesting process to watch as it unfolds - - - possibly culminating this week but definitely within the month, and from both a community and a corporate pov (point-of-view) - - - how Starbucks will react when it faces a different kind of customer revolt.

From Sunday's Wall Street Journal online:

In towns as small as Bloomfield, N.M., and metropolises as large as New York, customers and city officials are starting to write letters, place phone calls, circulate petitions and otherwise plead with the coffee company to change its mind.

An excellent read as it provides a heretofore ignored element , i.e., how Starbucks has become an almost essential asset to the communities they're in, unlike all of the negative press and bashing by local merchants they've (unfairly?) received over the years.

Anyway, here in New England, Massachusetts is getting hit the hardest with seven (7) Starbucks closures (Source: Starbucks and Associated Content)

1. Dartmouth Mall, Dartmouth, Massachusetts
2. Emerald Square Mall, 999 South Washington Street, North Attleboro, Massachusetts
3. Shrewsbury Street Marketplace, 222 Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, Massachusetts
4. Newton Centre, 70 Union Street, Newton, Massachusetts
5. Sharon, Five Post Office Square, Sharon, Massachusetts
6. Stoughton, 425 Washington Street, Stoughton, Massachusetts
7. Middlesex Turnpike Burlington,  47 Middlesex Turnpike, Burlington, Massachusetts

Five (5) are slated to close n Connecticut:

1. Prospect Hill, 137 Prospect Hill Road, East Windsor, Connecticut
2. King's Highway, 1201 King's Highway, Fairfield, Connecticut
3. Wethersfield Avenue, 692 Wethersfield Avenue, Hartford, Connecticut
4. Evergreen Walk, 301 Evergreen Way, South Windsor, Connecticut
5. Windsor Locks, 209 Ella Grasso Turnpike, Windsor Locks, Connecticut

In Maine, both closings are in Bangor:

1. Bangor Mall, 663 Stillwater Avenue
2. Bangor Broadway at 652 Broadway

New Hampshire only loses one:

1. Rochester Shoppes, 160 Washington Street in Rochester, New Hampshire

Vermont has three stores and apparently all three will remain open and none in Rhode Island were mentioned.

Here are other posts we've done in defense of Starbucks (and against Dunkin Donuts) and we invite you to also email us your comments.

In defense of Starbucks

EDITORIAL

What prompted this post was an article by Ellen Wolfhorst from Reuters published today - Some coffee fans get grim delight in Starbucks woes - which raised some questions with us as to what motivated Ms. Wolfhorst and/or Reuters to write such a story with that kind of an angle, one that clearly seemed to find far more anti-Starbucks people than supporters.

So, we take it upon ourselves to offer a different perspective.

We begin by saying that we are huge Starbucks supporters, daily consumers (often multiple times daily) of the brand who intentionally seek out their locations wherever we go. Admired them for years for how they revolutionized the approach to not only brewing quality coffee but even more for creating a new leisure and lifestyle paradigm that transformed the coffee-only experience.

From strictly a former New Yorker and New Jersey-boy perspective, thanks to Starbucks, gone was the dominance of the traditional Burger/Coffee Shop and American Diner (as opposed to local espresso/coffee houses dedicated to brewing quality coffee) that, at least within New York's tri-state region - always discouraged their patrons from sitting around just buying coffee, always forced them to buy food in order to stay, always hired too many worthless servers whose bad attitudes erupted into unprofessional conduct because you were only ordering coffee and weren't spending $40 or $50 in their too-often rat-infested dives - and who always pressured you to then move on to make room for the next group.

Some Burger/Coffee Shops & Diners we know of on Madison Avenue, for example, from the 50s to the 90s in Midtown Manhattan, actually put wooden plaques at each table specifying (1) the minimum number of patrons allowed to sit in a booth, (2) how long they could stay and (3) what their minimum bill had to be. Even in a City of 10 million plus people, and considering the hundreds of these locations throughout that City, that's still not good business, just total greed and the manipulative signs of a fascist monopoly.

Now, don't get us wrong, we fully, actively and regularly support small businesses in our communities, like the multi-location place on Newbury Street in Boston called Espresso Royale and another throughout Boston's South Shore called Coffee Break Cafe, both with outstanding espresso and regular coffee. 

But there's an additional issue we've considered. Too often, at too many places here in Boston but most especially throughout New York City, they have also consistently failed to maintain the kind of superb hygiene standards that large chains like Starbucks (or the two places we mentioned above) mandate for the owners or managers to maintain - which is usually well-above local health standards.

And we can't forget that even some Dunkin' Donuts locations around Boston have horse flies and gnats landing on their always uncovered donuts! But as we wrote in that piece, at least Starbucks encases - and refrigerates - all of their food, as do both Espresso Royale and Coffee Break Cafe, we might make certain to add.

So hey, if you don't like Starbucks - just like programs on television - don't watch them, don't go in!

But don't knock a company that has also done more - and spent more - to not only educate the general public about the various levels of quality coffee that are out there, which in turn, made it that much easier for local mom-and-pop coffee houses to have a fully-informed customer - but who also changed the leisure paradigm for everyone, for the better.

And stop whining!

Sounds of Boston - Vol. I, No. 1

One of the most enjoyable responsibilities of working on [: neon :] is deciding what and when to shoot the video. As we're still in beta, we've certainly made our share of mistakes, thankfully most of them transparent to you. But that's why they call it a beta.

Anyway, one major mistake we've had to deal with was actually internal and involved not understanding the critical importance of video library archiving and retrieval, i.e., what to do with all of the video we've been shooting, how do we archive and label them - and most importantly, how do we know what each clip has in the clip without having to replay each clip in its entirety, in time-wasting real-time?

We faced that problem this afternoon, when we couldn't find the clip we needed to upload to one of our four video streaming hosts, only to discover that it was sitting not in our Macs, but as a Windows Media File on one of our PCs that we hardly use anymore.

Anyway, we came across a number of unpublished short clips we took one day in and around Boston, and realized we could create a Sounds of Boston theme with them, as a compilation of where we went over a twelve hour period in early May.

So we've embedded the Viddler version of our stream since they encourage everyone to post comments directly to the video, which we have indeed done. So look for the little dots along the progress bar and run your mouse over them to see what we've written - and we'll tell you what you're looking at.

So here's 2 minutes, 56 seconds of some great sounds and sights in this beeyouuteefull city we call home, Boston, Mass.

Boston/Boylston: thousands expected for Grand Opening of largest Apple store in U.S.

UPDATE: We have video of the entire event and much more here.

UPDATE: 05/15/08 - 02:58 - Just about ready to leave but we wanted to test something first. Yesterday, we subscribed to TalkShoe for LIVE audio shows to post here, so today I thought, if we can't be absolutely certain whether we can do a LIVE streaming video feed from the new store, maybe we can at least schedule a LIVE radio feed via TalkShoe and through my cellular phone from the site. So the LIVE audio feed is set to begin @ 5:30 p.m. Eastern and will go for up to 2 hours. To join in the conversation LIVE, just dial (724) 444-7444 no earlier than 5:25 p.m. and then when prompted, enter the show code 19595, or just log-on to http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/19595. Hope it works. We'll give it our best shot.

It's beautiful, isn't it? This is the pic Apple now has on their site. Can't really tell if it's an actual shot or a CAD-style rendering.

Wow, can't wait to see it - although planning on going to the Grand Opening of Apple's newest store tonight may not be as easy as it sounds for us - or anyone. Been hearing on the local news that "thousands" are expected to be lined up for the 6:00 p.m. door opening, which means that a casual stroll to the Starbucks a few doors away may be darn near impossible.

Crowd control.

Boston's finest everywhere. (Love those guys).

Traffic snarls. (God bless the MBTA).

Barricades?

I do have some ideas as to how to bypass the crowds, but one thing is certain now, we will not be able to LIVE feed any kind of video as we have no air cards to deploy. I know, dumb mistake. But I also have an audio idea that just might work, but I'll be scrambling this afternoon to see if it does.

Anyway, we'll head out around 3 or 3:30 this afternoon to begin our trek on the T. The goal is to be there no later than around 4 to get a good enough position to take some pics. However and from experience, my guess is that they'll have a designated area in front of the store's entrance for the media (sometimes referred to as a press pen), and if so, any hopes of staying up front may be dimmed since we've been unable to secure any credentials in such a short window between announcement and day of.

So, we'll do our part and keep you posted throughout the day with LIVE blogging, and if you drop in to [: neon :] every chance you get to see what's up, then we can share the excitement.

What do marathons, flies on donuts & painful singing on Dancing with the Stars all have in common?

COMMENTARY & GENERAL GRIPING

Sorry for the time lapse in reporting anything new, and yes, we're still here and going strong, but we've also been frantically trying to set up, book, plan, whatever, some pretty exciting events to put forth here on [:neon:]

In the meantime, I, Head Geek spent the day out in the Framingham/Natick area of Massachusetts, also known as Metro West. It was a magnificently sunny, mild Spring day, and thankfully traffic was at a minimum since it was also a Massachusetts State Holiday called Patriots Day.

Here is a brief video shot today with my incredible Canon PowerShot SD750 (whose AVI will just not load on Typepad properly, so forget it until we can embed it elsewhere)

Anyway, some observations since we last got together.

(1) The Boston Marathon was held earlier in the day, and for the life of me, can always understand Personal Best, but will never understand running until you hurt, hurl, collapse or drop dead, none of which are particularly appealing outcomes. The runners are gosh darn nice people, though, having met some of them while riding the T last night taking my wife to Logan (Airport) and back. Hello to Gunilla and Wilhelm from Sweden and Austria, respectively, I believe.

(2) Every time the warm weather comes and those pesky, germ-carrying horse flies begin to appear, (especially when they hang in the Men's Room and then I personally see them landing on the donuts, oh yummy!) has anyone else ever wondered how Dunkin' Donuts's shops have been allowed to leave their donuts uncovered and always exposed to flies, gnats, mosquitoes, dirt, dust, not to mention the occasional employee sneeze that may have gotten away from them? Hey, Boston may prefer Dunkin' Donuts coffee over Starbucks (another thing I'll never understand about Boston), but at least Starbucks covers, protects, encases everything they sell . . . heck, they even refrigerate the stuff!!!

(3) I know Dancing with the Stars is a popular show, and I too love the art of dance, but a few years back I reviewed the show and said how bad the singers were and how bad the band too often was. Since then, the band has gotten a wee bit better, but the arrangements continue to absolutely stink to high heaven - - - horribly hokey and wedding-ish. And the singers, especially the ones I heard tonight? Uh, doesn't anyone hear them go off key, so many, many times? The noise pollution from such a bad cover band, such horrible wedding singers and then that Lawrence Welk-ish theme song? I've learned to watch the show with the sound off.

See 'ya later.

posted by Head Geek