We heart coffee.

This morning I stopped in at Starbucks on my way to work to grab a London Fog (or earl grey tea misto with vanilla as they like to call it). Despite my desire to be able say that I hate it there because it's so corporate and uniform, I really can't. Because I kind of love it there. It is kind of nice to be able to be anywhere in the city and be able to get the exact drink you want, whenever you want it.

As I was sipping my tea at my desk, I decided to learn a little more about them. According to the wikipedia article, Vancouver has the most Starbucks locations than anywhere in the world. This didn't really seem shocking to me, because I know we seem to have a LOT of them around... but I was curious to see how many. So using the location finder on the Starbucks Canada website and typing in only "Vancouver, BC" as the location, I was actually kind of amazed at the number that popped up.

84. There are 84 Starbucks stores in this city alone. I'm only talking about Vancouver proper. This isn't even taking into account all of the stores in nearby cities like Burnaby, Richmond, North Van, etc. Within the borders of actual Vancouver there are 84 possible places for you to grab your favourite latte. (Actually, there are even MORE because that is not counting all those little ones inside Safeway!) That is slightly insane.

Just in the neighborhood I work in, there are 4 of them not too far apart. There's one at City Square, another one at Broadway and Heather, another one down the hill on 6th near Heather, and ANOTHER one on 2nd and Yukon! It's bananas! What I don't understand is WHY there are so many. Is it because they are greedy or because WE are incredibly lazy? Probably both. The good news is that if they continue to expand, we may never hear conversations such as this ever again:

Guy: "There's a Starbucks across the street. Let's go get a coffee."
Other Guy: "Jesus, we have to cross the street? UGH."

No wonder people make fun of this place. We are kind of ridiculous.