Safe as Starbucks

There's a false sense of safety in this city. We see it when people leave their doors unlocked while they go off on three-hour jaunts, only to come home to find that thieves strolled in and stole their Rolex watches and Apple products. We see it when people leave their bikes unlocked, their strollers unattended, and their laptops free for the taking.

Now the New York Times reports: Starbucks is the epicenter of thievery, the heart of the Bad Old Days' return.



As a regular chronicler of this phenomenon, I'm enjoying the Times piece with ample Schadenfreude. It's filled with examples of people who believe they can leave their valuables on a table or chair, then ignore them completely--people who are shocked when they're then stolen. One "commanding officer said people who left laptops behind to use the restroom should not be surprised to return to an empty table."

It never fails to amaze me, but people really do that--and then they panic. This is what happens when your false belief in safety comes crashing into reality. So what's happening here? Why are New York City Starbucks a hotbed of five-fingered crime?

In the Times article, Starbucks is described as "A place so comfortable and familiar, with its jazz, leather chairs and Wi-Fi," that people don't think twice about leaving their purses and laptops unattended. Starbucks has provided a perfect environment for feeling safe--without actually being safe.



It all reminds me of a 2004 Malcolm Gladwell article. In "Big and Bad," Gladwell concludes that for SUV drivers the feeling of safety is more important than actually being safe. "That feeling of safety isn't the solution," he says, "it's the problem," because SUVs aren't safe--they rollover and kill other drivers.

He explains how people who feel helpless will seek a seemingly safe environment, like an SUV, where they can be passive and thus have their perception of risk distorted. Says cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille, "Safe means I can sleep. I can give up control. I can relax. I can take off my shoes. I can listen to music."

Research has shown that people who drive SUVs tend to be self-oriented, attracted to luxury, and fearful of crime. What about the avid Starbucks customer?



At Starbucks they like round tables, because round makes single people appear to be less alone, and they like the odd names for sizes, because the special language makes them feel like part of a special community, according to author Karen Blumenthal. From this we could assume that people who love being inside a Starbucks fear being alone and want very much to belong to a select group.

This false sense of community could certainly make people feel safe, lulling them into blunders based on a belief that everyone around them is like them, and looking out for them. No wonder the buzzards are circling. But we know this isn't just a Starbucks issue. It's happening all over town, this blind belief in false safety.

The city as a whole has been engineered to be like one big Starbucks or SUV, a comfy womb-like environment, up high (in status) and filled with cupholders (amenities), created for helpless, frightened people who want to feel safe, so they can relax. The people who design Starbucks and SUVs make them this way so they can sell the products and make money. Why would a city be so engineered? Who benefits from a passive and pacified populace?

We Love Your Dog!

The signs of the city can tell you a lot about what's happening socially. About a decade ago, we started seeing "Shut Up" signs all over the place. Clearly, they were necessary, and so we must assume that people needed to be told to shut up because they were getting louder and louder, caring less and less about their impact on others.

There's another breed of sign that's been cropping up everywhere more recently. It's the "We Love Your Dog" sign. It might also be the "We Love Your Baby" or "We Love You and Your Laptop" sign, but most often it has to do with dogs. ("Pets" really means dogs, since cat people don't usually bring Fluffy on errands.)



Years ago, businesses that sold food had signs on the door that said "No Dogs Allowed." Simple, straightforward, unassailable.

But today, more and more, they say something along the lines of: "We love your dog! Unfortunately, the big bad laws of the land say we can't let your dog inside. Please don't get mad at us--it's not our fault! To placate you and contain your narcissistic rage, here's a bowl of water and some treats. Really, truly, we LOVE your dog. Please don't get mad." (I am paraphrasing.)



You see these signs everywhere--I've collected quite a few--on the doors of big chain stores and little coffee shops. On grocery stores and Chinese restaurants. Many of them come with pictures of cute dogs. See? We really, really like them! (Please don't get mad.)



"Love" is the operative word here. The signs typically say we "love" your dog, pets, etc. Not: we're tolerant, or we don't mind, but we LOVE. The message is: We're not "haters" filled with negativity.

The signs almost always say "your" dog/pets. We love YOUR dog, not dogs in general. "We love dogs" could actually be true, but "We love your dog" is almost impossible. "We don't know your dog, so how could we love it," would be more accurate. But the words "you" and "your" have taken over marketing. They make people feel special, so there it is, the appeasing "your."



And then comes the turn, usually in the form of the word "unfortunately." It has a stammering quality, like a big gulp before the delivery of bad news you're afraid will get you slapped in the face. Don't upset the dog owner!



In this climate, some businesses just want to be the good guy. Like Ricky's, where they don't sell food, and so can allow pets. They make the most of it with this sign, basically saying, "Hey, we're not dog-hating jerks like a lot of other people in this neighborhood. We're cool."



So what are these signs telling us about human interactions in the city today?

It seems obvious that they are revealing a trend: Entitled people with dogs are getting very upset when they walk into a food establishment with their pet and are asked to take the animal outside. Maybe the dog person throws a fit. Maybe they go home and attack the business on their blog or give them a scathing review on Yelp. This happens frequently enough, and causes enough disruption, that the business has been forced to put up an ass-kissing sign.



We see a variation of the sign, though less frequently, with babies and strollers. "We really love your baby" they say, but the fire code says we can't have strollers in here. Again, the subtext is: "Please don't blame us! Please don't get angry! It's not our fault! Blame the government. We are not baby haters."

With good reason they cover their asses--we know what the stroller brigade did to the anti-babies in bars people.



But one of my absolute favorites in this genre of signage comes from a popular coffee shop in Park Slope, the New York neighborhood that is perhaps the epicenter of entitlement, and home to many dogs and strollers. It's a very long, funny, ass-kissing, walk-on-eggshells explanation about why they don't want customers hanging out for hours on their laptops, and it begins, "We're absolutely thrilled that you like us so much that you want to spend the day...and we love having you here, believe you me!"

It goes on to apologize in advance for having to "say something" to people who don't follow the rules, and "we really dislike that sort of thing, it is so not 'us' and makes everyone uneasy." Once again, the message is: Please don't make us be bad guys.



There's something pathetically simpering about all these signs. When did businesses get so afraid to be the heavy? It's like the Mom or Dad who wants to be pals and buddies with their children, rather than the authority figures who say what's what. In fact, I'm inclined to blame those Moms and Dads for the behaviors that led to the necessity for these signs.

Finally, here's how it should be done. This sign--in parent-coddling Park Slope, no less--is not afraid to assert itself and tell it like it is. "This is a doctors office, not a playground!!" But maybe you have to be a needle-wielding M.D. to get away with that?

Cells at Registers

People talk on their cell phones everywhere. We know this. We bear this unbearable fact daily. But one of the more egregious cell-phone uses occurs at the city's countless cash registers. You've seen them. Those people who approach the counter, plop down their purchases, and say nothing to the cashier, all the while yakking to some invisible someone else while the worker silently rings up their wares.

Money changes hands. No one speaks. The consumer behaves as if they are alone in the universe. It's one of the more dehumanizing everyday experiences we can witness.



Some businesses have begun expressing their weariness of such behavior with little signs displayed on their cash registers.

Think Coffee tries the polite approach, "kindly refrain from talking on your cell phone when ordering."



Soy Luck Cafe takes another tack, trying to flip the script, "If you are on the phone at the counter we will pretend that you don't exist." (As you pretend we don't exist.)

In small, parenthetical type, they add, "It's a beautiful world all around you. Be a part of it."



Awhile back, Ken Belson wrote about sidewalk cellphone use in the Times, "cellphone walkers are less likely to help a stranger in need, for instance, or to exchange pleasantries with passers-by. They are effectively cutting themselves off from the random encounters in public spaces that used to invigorate city living."

In Sherry Turkle's new book Alone Together, she complains "that the sight at a local cafe of people focused on their computers and smartphones as they drink their coffee bothers her: 'These people are not my friends,' she writes, 'yet somehow I miss their presence.'" In the Times review, Kakutani called this "primly sanctimonious...sentimental whining," but it's a profound statement. I know how Turkle feels. We have lost people to these devices.

As we lose humans to technology, we also lose a piece of our humanity.

Soylent Green

The pop-up "green space" Park Here closed a couple weeks ago, after an extended run at Openhouse Gallery, "New York's pop-up retail space."

I took a stroll through the indoor park, over the Astroturf "grass" and under the faux trees, past the ladies selling cupcakes and the signs about yoga classes, into a weird world where people were behaving as if they were in an actual park.



When I'd read about Park Here, I expected people to behave as if they were looking at a spectacle. But instead, they set out blankets--as if they could get dirty--and were sitting on them with snacks and babies. People were lounging around, reading the newspaper and chatting. Had they actually planned to spend the day in here?



I kept thinking: They're being prepped for the post-apocalypse, when the air will become unbreathable, when grass and trees will have all been incinerated--and they're ready for it. They're perfectly willing to accept a future in which nature is reproduced in plastic and kept indoors. As long as there are cupcakes and wi-fi.

Sidewalk Sitters

Something I've noticed over the past 5-7 years, or thereabouts, since the hyper-gentrification of everything went into full swing, is the increasing habit of non-homeless people to park their backsides on the sidewalks and curbs of the city.

At first, it would startle me. I'd see them at a glance, assume "homeless," and then get up closer and have to do a double-take. She's not asking for change with that Starbucks cup.



And it's not just that these sidewalk sitters are non-homeless people. I'm not talking about a bunch of skateboard kids or punks "chillin'" on the dirty curb. The people I'm talking about are largely middle and upper-middle class "regular" folks. It's the tourists and Juicy Couture shoppers. It's moms from Ohio.



They sit to make phone calls and write text messages.

They relax on the curb to have deep, intimate talks.



They plop down with their soy mocha lattes.

They sprawl out with their shopping bags.



They read maps and drink Snapple.



They place plastic containers of snacks on the curb next to them and indulge in a little street munching.



They spread their legs, enjoy their iced coffee, and send their digital missives.



They collapse en masse, with a group of pals, and shoot the breeze while leaning against a lamp post or a mailbox, or with their sandaled feet in the gutter. As if nobody ever pisses or pukes there. As if nobody's dog ever took a shit in that exact spot, and no toxic liquids flow through that green stream.



And you know what it is. It's the assumption of sterility. All those shiny boxes, those condos and newsstands made of glass, all that Bloombergian glitter makes people think everything in New York is clean, so the sidewalks must be too. Clean enough to eat off?

It's a minor complaint, perhaps a petty one, but something about it just bugs me.

Sidewalk I.D.

Now and then, more often than one might think, when you are walking down the sidewalk in New York City, you find yourself stumbling into a reality-TV shoot.

Usually, being reality TV, it's something stupid and uncomfortably fascinating. Like a woman dressed in a bacon suit and chattering to a hot dog man. Or a woman and man dressed in towels and tin tutus for a show the PA guy tells you is called "Just Ask Mom," or "What Would Mom Think," or something like that.

(After a bit of research, I'm pretty sure that was food TV's celebu-mom Paula Deen taping the pilot for "Mom Logic.")


September 2009

If you're curious and have time to spare, you might lurk around a bit, listening and watching. But be careful. The production people sometimes carry signs like this:

"By entering this area, you consent to being photographed by means of video recording and you grant producer, carrier stations, sponsors, as well as their affiliated and related entities the right to record and use your name, voice, and likeness worldwide in perpetuity for any purpose whatsoever. In addition, you release the above parties from any and all liability in connection with your appearance and/or for loss or damage to person or property."



Let's repeat that: Simply by walking on a public sidewalk, you have somehow given several corporate entities, including advertisers--like the makers of Viagra and Preparation H--the right to use your name, voice, and likeness.

Into eternity.

For whatever purpose they desire.

If they want to put your face on a hemorrhoid and digitally manipulate your mouth to sing "Baby Got Back" while they machine-gun you with bullet-shaped Preparation-H suppositories, they can do that. And even if it causes you to lose your job and spiral into depression, you can't hold them liable. Really?



It's bad enough the streets are full of photo-snapping bloggers (like myself), cam-happy iPhoners, surveillance cameras, and the Google Streetview car. By now, we're all coming to terms with the fact that we are being watched and recorded much of the time. In public, we can have no expectation of privacy.

But the reality shows? They own your identity. And there is no getting it back.

Forever

In another blow to our public privacy, the new Forever 21 behemoth store in Times Square has installed a digital interactive billboard that incorporates...you. You might be walking by or standing around on 7th Avenue when this giant computerized model plucks you from the crowd. On the billboard, for all to see, she actually grabs an image of you.



Then she either kisses you and puts you in a Forever 21 shopping bag, sticks you under her hat, or makes a disgusted face and tosses you over her shoulder.

Naturally, people can't wait to be a part of this marketing stunt. They are crowding around, waving their hands in the air, trying to grab the attention of the computerized lady.

Will you be next?


images and video from DesignBoom