Starbucks…

I’ve never really understood the hype about Starbucks. It’s not like it’s the place to go if you want good coffee — even though they are the self proclaimed makers of the world’s best coffee.

Maybe if you’re in the US and is having a hard time finding a place that serves good coffee, the kind that doesn’t taste like it’s the left over water from rinsing the coffee pot (equivalent of 1 teaspoon of instant coffee in 2 litres of water), then Starbucks might be an option. But “the world’s best coffee”?! I wouldn’t think so.

This brings me to a funny thing I came across about 6 months ago. This rumour that Starbucks was opening up in Jönköping came about. Keep in mind now that Jönköping is the 9th biggest city in Sweden — probably not the best place to open up the first franchise in a new country.
Anyway, apparently some crafty person had stickered up a Starbucks logo, with the text “Opening soon” next to it, on the window of a closed electronics store.

This caused a massive wave of teenage wannabe fashionista/blogger activity and they were basically shitting their fashionable sweatpants and leggings in excitement. People were blogging about it everywhere some referred to it as “total happiness” and local newspapers called the landlord of the building and someone even called the Starbucks head office (!) to see who was opening up the franchise. Of course it turned out to be a prank — a very well executed one at that.

While looking for the links to who posted about it I noticed that many of the blogs have removed those posts or closed the blogs. Was it really that embarrassing they fell for the prank? Isn’t it more embarrassing to cover up the fact that they were excited about it?

Here are a few links: 1 — 2 — 3 — 4 — 5
Even the local news site posted about it here.

However, now it has been confirmed that Starbucks is actually opening for real at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm, now that’s a more strategic place to open a first franchise, and the fashion bloggers of Sweden are pooping their pants again. Or to quote one of the original, not so convinced, reactions to the prank story:

“I bet the modebloggare of Jönköpingslän are having babies into their Frappuchinos.”
- lillabloggmonstret.blogg.se

I’m guessing there will be a shortage of stand-by flights to Stockholm now, since all the little fashionistas with their pink laptops and Chihuahua-stuffed handbags are going to have to live at Arlanda Airport, so they can get their well moisturised hands on some venti sized caramel-choco-latta-moccachinos.

New Simple products

Here are photos of some of the new Simple products that will be hitting the distros around the world shortly.

Brad Simms in Stockholm

Brad Simms was over here in Europe for the Simpel Session i Estonia and also took the chance to do some more traveling around here. So after Estonia and Finland he showed up here in Stockholm before heading down to Copenhagen.

Me, Jesper and Brad had a little session at Stockholm Skatepark where I actually brought out the camera and shot a few snaps of Jesper and Brad airing the mini. Brad was no doubt going higher than anyone I’ve seen ride that ramp. Nice!