What do you actually say to the aforementioned unfortunate barista?

usually, something along the lines of:
"I want much more coffee in half the liquid. Stronger and much more concentrated than usual. Even, make it like you would a double, but produce less liquid than you normally would for a single. I don't want the pissy dribble at the end."

I think they worry you expect some kind of value for money ratio where spending more money on less liquid makes no sense. so they keep running the machine well into the pissy dribble stage, and fill up your cup with black water. I don't want that.

How much sugar do you put in your coffee, SP? For me, the thing about having Italian coffee is that it has to be simply loaded with sugar to offset the bitterness of having it that concentrated.

And since I tend to drink it with either a cannolo or cartoccio in my other hand, the sugar-rush is quite dizzying.

Spangles, if you think it's bad at Nero, I want to see you order an espresso at Ally Pally ice rink, and I want to video you tasting it.

Sugar? No sugar!

Really, no sugar? Ouch.

Making the little tinkling sounds with my spoon as I stir in the sugar is an essential part of the espresso experience.

Never any sugar with my Starbucks, though (sips deeply). Pure black.

Espresso at an ice rink?

Drinking really shit coffee or hot cocoa in a syrofoam cup at a hockey rink at some ungodly hour while watching one's kids or siblings play is a common experience that binds all of us "northerners" together.

Cortado, that's actually my coffee of choice.

Spangs - I'm really surprised you don't get sworn at.

Reed, we always used Dunkin' Donuts coffee for that purpose.

Gramsci, I use less than half a packet, but only if I've not just finished eating something sweet. And it has to be unrefined.

There are still a few good independent coffee stores around my part of NYC, but they are no longer cheap. The one nearby that opened in an old Falafel store is doing very well, and make a really good coffee. No cups bigger than 8oz for anything.

Then there is Think, where I am meeting my parents today. My step-dad mentioned meeting in a Starbucks, so I suggested somewhere that didn't make crap coffee (to be fair, he was picking somewhere convenient more than anything, and was more than happy to change). Organic coffee, organic milk, donations to local charity from profits, Lower East Side Girls Club cookies, and a barista with a red spiders-web elbow tattoo. It is so hipster it is pretty hideous, but they serve good coffee. In typical style, the number of macs to other laptops is always dominant in favor of style (more Macbook Air's sighted there than anywhere). I wonder why Greenwich Village hates NYU...

UA, yes and Tim Horton has built a massive marketing campaign around the image of parents keeping warm with TH coffee while lacing their kids' skates (presumably in some old barn of a rink in a small town on the Canadian prairie where everyone knows each other).

But sooner or later, if you spend enough time at an ice rink, you'll find yourself needing a warm beverage and will take whatever is on offer. The choice is often that shit that comes out of the machine where you press the buttons for sugar or "whitener" and as often as not what you order isn't what you get.

I think that's why my parents made me quit hockey.

When I was growing up, there was no Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. There was a Mister Donut (a chain which has mysteriously disappeared from our land).

Reed's right aboutthe hockey connection but slightly off on the geography. Timmy's is more suburban than rural. The "Tim Horton's vote" in Canadian political terms is roughlyakin to the "soccer moms" of the US - suburban, minivan hockey parents.

(the last election in Canada was heralded as a victory of the Tim Horton's vote over the Starbucks vote...I'm relatively certain that the Clintonistas "latte liberals" crack was based on a Canadian model...look for McCain to start prominently sipping Dunkin Donuts coffee soon)

Timmy's is also not quite so big on the prairies, where Robin's Donuts has a big share of the market. Robin's equivalent in the Toronto is "Country Style" donuts. The clientele divide themselves on class and ethnic lines and as a result, in the same way that a Starbucks within a block of a house will raise the price of the house by about 30K (no I'm not kidding), a nearby Country Style will lower it by about the same amount.

The block I live on is quite unique in that I have a Starbucks on one end of the block and a Country Style on the other.

TT: I tend not to use the phrase "pissy dribble". And i usually start off with "Sorry to be a massive pain but would it be possible please...."

and I smile at them. best to get a male server since they are usually more susceptible to the smile. (is this bad of me?)

but yeah: I'd swear at me, if I were them.

Meanwhile, I put about half a packet of zucchero grezzo in my espresso, and I can't remember the word for it but I know we don't say dirty do we. coarse?

[edit: demerara, maybe]

Good to know. The pictures in the ads always seems to imply "salt of the earth, real Canadians" which I translated into "rural."

The notion that Starbucks is "upscale" or "affluent" is a cannard passed around by the media and idiot political pundits who spend most of their time in Dupont Circle.

Not that I've surveyed all of their customers about their income, but of all the branches I've been to, the clientele seems to be a cross section of the people who work or shop in that neighborhood. It's not really "downscale" either, but "middle class" in the broadest sense.

Spangly: raw?