Everyone knows Starbucks to be a coffee shop.  No, wait, everyone knows Starbucks serves obscenely expensive coffee.

   I don't go to coffee shops as often as others my age do.  I buy my coffee from the canteen or from a street vendor, since I really suck at making coffee.  I'm not really part of Generation Coffee, since I'm still getting my caffeine from Coke.  Of course, they serve Coke at Starbucks.  At least that's what they told me - I don't go there.

   Not too long ago, Starbucks existed in the mind of the average Filipino from "Star Buko" t-shirts or from tales of relatives in America.  Coffee was coffee, and class and status were clearly defined along the lines of whether one uses milk, creamer, or none at all.  Times have changed: coffee is no longer "just coffee" but is reified through chemistry and economics: differences of beans whether they're Colombian or Arabica make or break your wallet.  "Shots" of cream are, well, shot into a basic cup of coffee and turned into "latte," which is nothing more than your basic milk-and-coffee combination with a fancy name, served in a fancy cup.  Everything is fancy.  It is, after all, a boutique coffee shop.

   Which is quite interesting, really.  A country as "poor" as the Philippines is not of want of a Starbucks as much as it is want of meeting its needs.  I'm not just talking about Starbucks but of boutique coffee shops in general: Mocha Blends, Seattle's Best, and all that.  Is this colonialism?  Is this the cloak corporations drape on society to give it a semblance of affluence despite obvious poverty?  Is this marketing gone mad?  This, ladies and gentlemen, is imperialism in practice.

   Yes, imperialism is given a concrete meaning aside from McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts.  Face it: both McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts serve basic needs.  Imperialist?  Yes, both conquered this country through food and spawned countless imitations: Jollibee, Chowking, Mister Donut, Plato Wraps, name it.  Starbucks, on the other hand, is an entirely different thing.  While McDonald's addresses hunger, Starbucks addresses status: a completely immaterial social need.  You don't go to Starbucks for coffee, rather, you go there to be seen drinking coffee.  There's a reason why it's in an island in the middle of an airport (a'la The Terminal) or the shop has big glass windows: it's to enclose the person in an atmosphere of affluence outside of the sphere of the masses.  Furthermore, Starbucks addresses ego: to be able to spend substantial amounts of money on something like mocha java not only gives you a dose of caffeine, but a certain kind of high associated with big spending, much like what one gets in a casino, a bingo game, or an arcade.

   There's nothing wrong with imperialism, however.  There's nothing wrong with the more affluent setting a standard of class and fashion for the masses who drink their coffee from a cheap mug or a styrofoam cup.  There is something wrong when vanity and conceit takes over the collective conscience and hurtles society into a state of distorted meanings, of affluence and poverty, of the truth and the myth.  That you're "poor" when you can no longer afford the cheapest cup of coffee, that the reality of coffee is no longer in its physical composition but in its economic manifestation.