Seattle's Coffee Messiah has been to the Garden of Gethsemane.
September 2, 2001 12:44 AM   Subscribe

Seattle's Coffee Messiah has been to the Garden of Gethsemane. Owner of independent Seattle coffee hotspot has been arrested for the alleged "Coffee Messiah" stickers found in and around an adjacent starbucks. Whatever I say! And on what grounds?
posted by crasspastor (18 comments total)
 
crasspastor! Go sit in whichever corner mathowie's reserved for the painfully punny.

p.s. Look! The Empire Strikes Back!

p.p.s. Sorry.
posted by lia at 1:02 AM on September 2, 2001


=ugh=

but that reminds me of the brand name of the coffee i came up with for benedictine monks.. "moral grounds"

um. sorry.
posted by meep at 1:50 AM on September 2, 2001


That same Starbucks had my girlfriends' car towed from their parking lot. I mean, she'd been parking there for probably six hours a day, every day for a week, without buying anything, but still! How unfair!

Smirk. That was pointless. It's just weird to see something on MeFi about a place that's literaly a block away from my apartment. I wonder what'll be written on their sidewalk chalkboard tomorrow. Up with V, down with ΒΆ$s.
posted by endquote at 2:53 AM on September 2, 2001


i live two blocks away.
too bad their coffee sucks.
posted by roboto at 8:48 AM on September 2, 2001


Yeah, how dare Starbucks move in and create competition for this guy. Horrors.
posted by owillis at 11:42 AM on September 2, 2001


I live one block away too! I never cease to be amazed at how many and how concentrated many of us Seattle mefites are!
posted by crasspastor at 12:07 PM on September 2, 2001


they should have posted the flyers in Russian as to baffle the police.
posted by clavdivs at 12:51 PM on September 2, 2001


Owillis, since ya don't live in Seattle you don't understand just how much coffee there is in this town- indeed, when a friend of mine recently visited LA he noted how sparse actual "coffee shops" are. The problem then isn't so much that *$ is competing- CM already has plenty of competition, including the longstanding B&O espresso just two blocks away- but that *$ seems to have sicced the cops on a local competitor with questionable basis (granted, the indymedia account is limited; did anyone witness this guy putting stickers up, or did they just assume it was him because they were Coffee Messiah stickers?). Oh, and btw, '*$' is my attempt to give Starbucks a pithy two-character name, just like other local behemoth MS...

Further, it's really the Wal-Martization tactic that's so despicable, where a big chain, even locally based, moves in and attempts to squeeze out the independent businesses (which I've heard you rave about in previous threads, owillis) by using only superior force and financial leverage.

That said, I rarely go to Coffee Messiah, preferring the closer and much tastier Espresso Vivace. Broadway and Olive Rules! Whooo!
posted by hincandenza at 2:28 PM on September 2, 2001



Broadway and Denny, that is. Broadway and Olive doesn't really exist... gawd, how embarassing!
posted by hincandenza at 2:34 PM on September 2, 2001


hincandenza--The report says that the vandal was seen in action. One way or another, I imagine that the innocence or guilt of the CM guy will be known shortly. And if that guy did it, then he deserves to be prosecuted.
posted by NortonDC at 3:05 PM on September 2, 2001


hincandenza: If you read all my previous ravings, you would also see I support megabiz when they provide a better/cheaper product for the end user. I have no "the way things used to be" feeling for the local retailer.

This wouldn't be so odd if the exact thing didn't happen on South Park last night.
posted by owillis at 3:13 PM on September 2, 2001


NortonDC, from the report at indymedia (is there another one out somewhere now?):
Coffee Messiah stickers were placed upon the windows and walls outside the Starbucks at E. Olive and Summit on capitol hill, and the serfs of the evil coffee empire reported witnessing a man placing said stickers upon the property [Emphasis my own]

I'm not reading that as being clear that the Coffee Messiah owner was the man, although it can sort of imply that. The question is, was the use of "a man" instead of "the owner of CM" a misleading spin by the report writer- not wholly implausible- or the simple facts of the case, that the *$ crew didn't get a good ID of the 'vandal', but suspected it might be the CM guy because of the stickers, so they sent the cops to pick him up. This report is too sparse to be sure...

owillis: Well, I agree that when megabiz does a better job, yay big business! However, something to bear in mind is that *$ has from the sound of it a generally better rep with the gov't police, while CM is something of a counterculture hangout, which makes this a little suspicious (although Gesthemene might be a bit much...). Also, more generally, the tendency of big business to externalize the costs of production- one of the basic no-no's of the free market- presents a false picture of quality vs. costs. Not that the local retailer is a holy sacrosanct thing, but let's not be too quick to praise megabiz for being better. For example, Wal-Mart was infamous for putting a new Wal-Mart in an area, and selling at or below costs, for a loss, to handily drive out the competition who had to actually stay in the black. They could only afford to do this because they'd subsidize that loss with the multibillions in profits from their innumerable other locations, until such time as that location was the only megastore left in the area, when their prices could return to profitable levels- perhaps even higher than they were before Wal-Mart arrived, to the detriment of consumers. Rinse, repeat...

Hey, maybe the CM guy was inspired by the South Park episode... :)
posted by hincandenza at 5:03 PM on September 2, 2001



NortonDC, from the report at indymedia (is there another one out somewhere now?):
Coffee Messiah stickers were placed upon the windows and walls outside the Starbucks at E. Olive and Summit on capitol hill, and the serfs of the evil coffee empire reported witnessing a man placing said stickers upon the property [Emphasis my own]

I'm not reading that as being clear that the Coffee Messiah owner was the man, although it can sort of imply that. The question is, was the use of "a man" instead of "the owner of CM" a misleading spin by the report writer- not wholly implausible- or the simple facts of the case, that the *$ crew didn't get a good ID of the 'vandal', but suspected it might be the CM guy because of the stickers, so they sent the cops to pick him up. This report is too sparse to be sure...

owillis: Well, I agree that when megabiz does a better job, yay big business! However, something to bear in mind is that *$ has from the sound of it a generally better rep with the gov't police, while CM is something of a counterculture hangout, which makes this a little suspicious (although Gesthemene might be a bit much...). Also, more generally, the tendency of big business to externalize the costs of production- one of the basic no-no's of the free market- presents a false picture of quality vs. costs. Not that the local retailer is a holy sacrosanct thing, but let's not be too quick to praise megabiz for being better. For example, Wal-Mart was infamous for putting a new Wal-Mart in an area, and selling at or below costs, for a loss, to handily drive out the competition who had to actually stay in the black. They could only afford to do this because they'd subsidize that loss with the multibillions in profits from their innumerable other locations, until such time as that location was the only megastore left in the area, when their prices could return to profitable levels- perhaps even higher than they were before Wal-Mart arrived, to the detriment of consumers. Rinse, repeat...

Hey, maybe the CM guy was inspired by the South Park episode... :)
posted by hincandenza at 5:03 PM on September 2, 2001



wtf? Not sure why that just double-posted...
posted by hincandenza at 5:03 PM on September 2, 2001


hincandenza--Are you arguing something in opposition to what I wrote? If you are, it blew right by me.
posted by NortonDC at 6:07 PM on September 2, 2001


hincandenza--
I second your preference for Espresso Vivace, I used to go there pretty much every day, until I moved off Capital Hill and down to south Seattle.
posted by Rebis at 6:38 PM on September 2, 2001


NortonDC: No, not at all! Just saying that my reading of the one report I've seen- namely, the indymedia one- was ambiguous as to whether the guy was arrested just because he was the owner of the coffee shop whose stickers someone put on *$, or if the witnesse(s) clearly saw it was that particular guy. The wording is only that they saw 'a' man, whereas if they clearly saw this particular man you'd think it would have said "witness claim to have seen Mr. Bialik" (bearing in mind that while indymedia is useful, it's not always up to top journalistic snuff to say the least). In other words, the closest "opposition" is only to point out that we don't know for sure from this report that the owner was witnessed or just that they saw a person put the stickers on and run off, and assumed it was the CM owner and called the police...

If he is guilty or innocent, hopefully that will come to light shortly. If guilty, I don't think he stands to face much punishment anyway- if he does, that's the real story- unless he's got a history: this level of vandalism under SMC constitutes a misdemeanor property destruction and generally has a max penalty of 90 days/ $1,000. But for this particular act, most any prosecutor would all but slap on the wrist with a relatively minor fine- and suspended sentence, maybe- for a first time offender doing lightweight graffiti (i.e., stickers or fliers as opposed to etching into glass or spraypainting). However, if the prosecutor tries to seek the max penalty, or try to paint this as a gross misdemeanor (more than $50 worth of damage, unlikely if all he did was put some stickers up that a little hot water and a sponge would easily remove), then it becomes the political "corporate police" issue that the indymedia writer tried to paint it as....

Man, I'm tired... i really shouldn't post when I get tired... :)
posted by hincandenza at 2:33 AM on September 3, 2001



Legit report on the Coffee Messiah
posted by owillis at 11:01 AM on September 6, 2001


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