Starbucks’ foes in Portland become violent



Starbucks’ foes in Portland become violent


DON RYAN / Associated Press

Security officer Eric Hamburg keeps an eye on things Wednesday near two boarded-up windows of a new Starbucks in Portland. Several windows at the store were broken with homemade bombs Tuesday night, but the store still plans to open today.


Residents decry a bombing but don’t deny that they oppose the shop.

WILLIAM MCCALL
The Associated Press
May 6, 2004

PORTLAND — Coffee giant Starbucks has been trying its best to promote socially responsible corporate policy about grower rights and environmental ethics, but it apparently fell on deaf ears in a neighborhood where devotion to social causes runs high.

Arson investigators were called to a new Starbucks store after three windows were broken by an explosive about 11 p.m. Tuesday.

The flames were out by the time fire crews arrived within three minutes. Minor damage was estimated at about $500.

A Starbucks spokeswoman said that “this type of incident is extremely rare.”

“When Starbucks opens a new store in a community, overwhelmingly the response is very positive,” Lara Wyss said at company headquarters in Seattle.

But the store, which will open today as planned, is in a neighborhood that has earned a reputation for social activism, and the vandalism drew immediate attention.

“There are a lot of people who don’t want Starbucks here,” said Lynn Hanrahan, owner of Mirador, a gift shop across the street from the newest outlet of the Seattle-based company.

Despite Starbucks’ contribution to a new playground in the Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood, the reception for the company has been cool, residents say.

A young man who identified himself only as “Spark” said he has lived in the neighborhood for the past three years and was one of the leaders of the effort to block Starbucks.

“We didn’t want Starbucks — we wanted a local business instead,” said Spark, who works a few blocks away at the People’s Co-op, a grocery established in the early 1970s.

The new Starbucks also is across the street from the Red and Black Coffee Collective.

Spark said the neighborhood did not need a second coffee shop on the same block, especially one that represents corporate culture to many residents of an area known as Seven Corners because of the jumble of intersecting streets that meet in front of the new Starbucks.

The owner of the building, Portland developer Peter Perrin, called the vandalism the work of extremists who do not represent the majority of neighborhood residents.

Linda Nettekoven, a member of the Hosford-Abernethy Neighborhood Development Association, said the opposition always has been stronger and more widespread than Perrin thinks.

But she was quick to denounce the vandalism as “violence and intimidation the neighborhood does not condone.”

Hmm. Oregon is really left though. Maybe Starbucks should consider arming an employee and giving them double money? I'd do that, if only I could fondle a Fulton armory FAR15 ;-)

Good idea.  
All the coffee you can drink and armed employees.



What?!



Did you hear that?



BAM! BAM! BAM!



Oh, it was just a customer.  
You gotta cut back on the coffee, man!

Give me a latte and a M16 and 100 rounds of bullets.