Starbucks - Station J

Station J.

J is number ten of 212 Starbucks serving burned coffee in Dallas city limits.

J finds its home in Uptown. Next to the Paul Frank Store and Banana Republic. J is conveniently located next to a beautiful new row of model homes perfect for todays graduates of Southern Methodist University and tomorrows CEOs of Pfizer.

I love coffee & I hate Starbucks. Local coffee shops either don't survive or simply don't exist in Dallas. It may be the obsession with driving & malls. It could be the fast-paced lack of community.

I complain...but I go. Maybe my bitter attitude toward corporate coffee finds a perfect mate with the bitter over cooked coffee I am served. I still get to stare and watch. People seem to have fun here. Smiling like perfectly directed models in an ad campaign. Can I suggest ignorance? Perhaps they just haven't tasted real coffee at a real coffee shop. They just don't know any better.

It could be that I embody the elite arrogance that keep people from adopting local coffee shops. A hint of intellect. A smidgen of taste. A sliver of sophistication. Thats what I want out of my coffee. You can keep your double-soy-carmel-pumpkin-latte. I'll just stick to my medium burned coffee. Two milks. Two sugars.

The Final Goodbye

I revisited some negatives from my grandmothers funeral a couple months ago.

They were eerie...both in spirit and quality. They had the foggy visual effect made possible by the Holga camera they were shot on. Somehow that foggy idea perfectly reflects the funeral and the events that surrounded her burial. The weekend was not rainy, but may as well have been. Not because of the events taking place, but because of the hasty and muggy reactions of the present family. It wasn't sorrow as much as an uncomfortable urgent desire to finish the funeral and move on.

These emotions aren't so much reflected in the following photographs. Probably because I more or less wanted to just move on from the whole ordeal myself.

Regardless, my grandma was finally laid to rest next to her husband and second child, Larry, after many pain filled years leading up to a painless final departure.