Reply #12: The thing is, [View All]

[tenshi816]

we already have our own coffee shops, individually owned and with character all their own (and some damn fine coffee). There's nothing Starbucks can bring to our town that will be any better than what we already have.

The town where I live has been around (although with a different name originally) since the Romans first built a fort there in the year 79 A.D. It later became prominent as a Victorian spa town (Charles Darwin was undergoing hydropathic treatment here when Origin of Species was published, and there's a Darwin Park in his honor very near where I live) and the town still retains a strong Victorian flavor. I'm not so set in my ways that I want it to be a living museum, but neither do I want the qualities I love about my adopted home to be diluted by an influx of American franchises. If I wanted that, I'd never have left the States to begin with.