ahlexka:

So I was walking from my place to the Division Blue line stop to go to school one fine Tuesday morning, and as I was crossing the street and a man asked me if I knew my way around the Neighborhood.

Seeing as how any Chicagoan gets a hard-on off knowing how to get around and giving people directions, I decided to help.

“Yes, I do”

“Okay great thanks, could you tell me if there is a Starbucks around here?”

Now at this point I knew I shouldn’t have gotten involved. Although I am fully aware that there is a Starbucks at the corner of my street and Division, is it right of me to lead a perfectly harmless human being into the realm of mediocrity?

I thought of three possible solutions:

1) Direct him to the very near by Starbucks (Lose/Lose situation [I lose for telling him where the nearest shitty coffee place is, he loses because he has to drink it])

2) Tell him I am not sure (Win/Lose [He wins for not having to drink Starbucks, I lose for having lost my recently acquired hard-on])

3) Tell him I am not sure where there is a Starbucks, but there is a coffee shop down the street in the other direction that serves better coffee (A Bakery called ‘Lovely’ It serves Intelligentsia, and I highly recommend it if you are ever in West Town/Wicker Park). (Win/Win/Win: I still have my hard-on, he drinks good coffee, and I help out)

Unfortunately, I went with the worst, because he looked like a man who was in a hurry, (of course he is everyone that likes Starbucks is in a hurry) and led him to the nearest Starbucks.

He got his (shitty) fix, and I still have a hard-on.

I think I can live with myself.

It’s a good thing this question was posed to Alex and not his brother Willy. If Willy were asked this question, he would have gone with Option 3, but not before launching into a tirade about how Starbucks burns their beans and how you are a miserable fuck for drinking that corporate swill. And then he would have gone home and made himself a French press of some organic Ethiopian roast to feel better.

These boys are crazy about their coffee. Seriously. Willy had a $700 Italian coffee maker he had bought online shipped home while he was in Iraq that ended up broken before he ever got to enjoy it because of a drunken mishap with its built-in grinder, which I like to call the “Raw Spaghetti Confetti Incident.”