#333 Kool Jerk

So the other day I was driving to work and what should I spy but a coffee stand. In case you just arrived from another planet, coffee stands are those semi-shack semi-kiosk drive-through places that have sprung up across the urban environment and taken over the architectural niche once occupied by photo huts. Ah, the ecology of commercialism. Seems we always need a drive-thru alternative in this great gasoline powered world of ours. Whatever we can get without exiting the confines of our moto-pod the better. Whether it’s to be eaten or drunk or just dry cleaned the fact that we can drive up and get it saves us all that annoyance of parking our car, turning it on and off, getting out of it, and, of course, running the risk of an encounter with that guy we just cut off without signaling as we zoomed into the drive-through place. Safe behind our car alarm and shatter proof glass, with the full dark tinting of course, so we can’t be recognized, our cocoon-like automobile saves us from the embarrassing responsibility of acting like decent human beings and courteous drivers. In the old days we used to have drive-through dairies. That was shortly after dairies stopped delivering to neighborhoods. Now that I see the delivery folks out there again can the drive-through milk joint be far behind. Someone once suggested to me that that would be a great idea. And I concur. One of the only times I have to emergency shop is when I’m out of milk. Hardly worth a full trip to Costco and certainly risky to try to only get milk at the supermarket. I think it would be a grand thing to pull to a coffee stand, order a latte, and a gallon of milk to go. But make sure you keep it simple. For quickness. That’s the point. Convenience stores used to keep their items more limited. Now they all seem to be infected with their own little case of urban sprawl. The inventory and the space to hold it grows and grows till suddenly, instead of a trim little bare essentials convenience store you have a mini-Wal-Mart. Not good. Sometimes you want a super-sized full meal deal, sometimes you only have time for a corndog, the original meal on a stick.
That’s what got me going on the coffee stand. The signboard said, stop in for a cool shake, and then it hit me. That’s why latte stands thrive, they occupy a very important structural position in the human psyche—the malt shop niche. The soda fountain niche. The act of making a machiato or a frappacino is structurally interchangeable with the act of making a strawberry shake or chocolate malt. Or even a cherry coke or a root bear float. The counter person does the same thing; they take an elaborate order for a specialized drink from you and make it up right before your eyes. “Barista” is nothing more than a fancy Italian name for...“soda jerk.”
America, ya gotta love it.