Perils of the Free Market

So, last January the coffee shop next door closed- Christie decided to retire and I was cast adrift. Not that walking an extra block to Peet's before work was a great hardship, but I missed being able to nip next door for an afternoon pick me up. The coffee was good if you caught it at the right time (which I usually did), the espresso drinks were decent and Christie was always on top of things. Seasonal decorations, flowers from her garden and a small but select display of cafe accoutrements made for a very pleasant atmosphere.

A few months passed and someone else opened up, we'll call her Anti-Christie.
I was initially excited, because COFFEE.
But my efforts to embrace the newcomer were rebuffed by the empty sterility of the 'new' shop, which echoed like a bus station bathroom, the acrid, overwhelming perfumery of the new owner, drowning the pleasant aroma of coffee beans in a chemical fog, and worst of all the genuinely terrible coffee. It reminded me of the swill we found during a Midwest swing a few years back, brown water that had me scouring convenience stores for canned Starbucks double-shots and yelping for joy when I found them.

It wasn't long before they were selling jelly beans on a sidetable straight from World Market, and not long after that a second sideboard appeared, piled high with jars of salsa. And not long after that, it was closed. Again.

Undeterred by two vacancies in the same spot inside of a year, another proprietor stepped in. She initially won my support by dropping in, inquiring what the last place had done wrong and asking some insightful questions about the local business environment. I responded candidly and got a thank you card sporting some lovely calligraphic handwriting out of it. So far, so good- I was just hoping the coffee was drinkable.

Cut to a month later and the place is open.
I was looking forward to checking it out, in spite of rumblings of community discontent- the new proprietor canvassed the employees of several local cafes, soliciting suggestions and recruiting employees. Declasse to be sure, but I'm a coffee drinker, not a business ethicist so I was willing to let it slide.

Alas, our potentially fruitful relationship (how many dollars did I spend at Christie's over the years?) was not to be. This morning I began my familiar stroll only to be brought up short by a new chalkboard easel set up on the sidewalk, bearing a quote from noted sociopath & welfare queen Ayn Rand:

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

Which could read as the battle cry of the scrappy underdog charging headlong into the future...if you ignore the attribution. But in an age where Rand's hateful, nihilistic philosophy holds sway over the entirety of the right wing and an unfortunate, deluded segment of the left, its echoes with the synchronized tramp of hobnailed boots.

So I kept walking the rest of the block to Peets, where I can get coffee minus the side order of crazy.