There are 15 people at best getting coffee in that first image
There’s only one (maybe two) actually geting served…
lol exactly what I thought
That’s more like 10 people on the first image
I was gonna say, these people moat likely dirve by themselves. And probably live less than a km away
Eh, don’t be too sure about only living a km away. I know growing up the nearest grocery store was about 12 km away. The nearest place to get coffee was further away.
Fast forward to today the nearest grocery store is only 1.5 km away, but there’s no sidewalk and the road is so narrow that you can’t walk on the shoulder. You could ride a bike, but there’s no bike lane so you’ll be hoping the whole way that no one runs you over.
The car issue is a lot more complex than “American Lazy LOL” it’s an infrastructure issue that was set in to effect almost 50 years before I was born. Designed to serve the car manufacturers and to sell cars.
The nearest Starbucks to me is a little over ~3km and I live in a major metropolitan area in the US.
My work is ~6.4km away and the Starbucks would be roughly on the way. It takes ~15 minutes for me to get to work by car. It would take ~2 hours to walk there, ~35 minutes to bike (weather permitting) and ~1 hour by bus.
Stopping at the drive thru on my way would still take less time overall and I’d have coffee. I don’t do it because Starbucks’s coffee is trash.
I’d love to not have to drive so much but infrastructure changes take a long time to happen so until alternative transportation is competitive I’ll be driving.
Biking for half an hour sounds fine to me if infrastructure is ok.
Sure, except ~3months out of the year I’d show up to work soaked in sweat and a different ~3 month period I’d be riding through accumulated snow or ice.
They do plow but usually not the bike lanes and the paths (what few there are) aren’t ever cleaned until midday.
Ideally I’d work from home, and I’d have a small electric car big enough for two humans and two medium dogs.
The average Starbucks does not have a throughput that should legally allow them to have a drive though.
It takes like 5 minutes per car and one near me used to regularly back up on to the road and block the adjacent parking lot.
It just doesn’t make sense to go to the start bucks drive through ever, so I don’t know who is foolish enough to form these lines.
Notwithstanding that Starbucks is an awful corporation with either subpar coffee or comparable sugar levels to ice cream.
Back before I kicked my Starbucks habit (and my car habit), I used to go to one with a drive through every day. The drive-through line was always backed up like the one in the picture. I always got my coffee quicker by parking my car, walking inside and ordering. Once I could order through the app, it was no contest. I was out the door in the same time it took drive-through people to move up 2 spots.
Even at the height of my car dependence, I never could understand the appeal of drive-throughs.
Drive thru coffee shops should be illegal.
Road adjacent coffee stands without seating are probably the most common business here in vietnam, it works because its only for pedestrians, bicycles, and motorbikes, I’ve never seen a car stopped at one, blocking traffic.
Yeah I for sure have time to sit down and drink a coffee at a cafe before work…
sure you do. in the car. on the freeway. it is your ‘cafe’. breakfast and coffee in your mobile ‘cafe’ as you move your vehicle forward two car lengths every five minutes for an hour.
I get my coffee when I get to work and drink it while loading trucks.
USA vs the world.
?
In all fairness, Starbucks in Europe even in more car centric countries are a lot more like the bottom one.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a drive-in to get coffee around these parts, and I’ve lived in several European countries.
One is a city (Paris) as a tourist hotspot, the other is a rural area. One seems to be people getting coffee to and from work (the shadows make it look early morning, so more likely to), the other requires they have time to enjoy. I don’t really see it as a very effective argument.
Tourist spot will always beat rural spot in terms of pure aesthetics - that’s why it’s a tourist spot. The streets around Cafe Palais Royal aren’t even that pedestrian-centric, they are just small Paris streets with small sidewalks whose streets have yet to be really pedestrianized.
A local cafe near Me has a seating area inside to enjoy a coffee with friends, and a window facing outside to get a coffee on the go. There’s no car access, you have to walk there. There are always customers, many of them very busy, and it’s a much nicer place to be than this picture of a Starbucks.
Also I don’t think this is rural. There’s a six lane stroad visible on the right. This is a city. It just looks rural, because the Americans spread everything out so much. I don’t think all these shiny SUVs are on their way to a goat farm. I think the Americans are sprawling everything out with hectares upon hectares of concrete and asphalt and then claiming to be rural.
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The US drive-thru urban sprawl hellscape is pretty unique to North America. The bottom picture didn’t have to be central Paris, you could find a similar motif in countless places.
You present it as if the bottom picture is the unusual one, when in reality it is the top one for almost all the world.
when in reality it is the top one for almost all the world.
I didn’t know Cafe Palais Royal were so prolific! I mean, if you want to use bad examples because they are more photogenic, it’s up to you. Plenty of less iconic shops with pedestrianized streets that image could have come from, sure. I think you have more of a point with the “
urbanrural sprawl hellscape” in US rural planning, but a place with more people density is going to have more of a soul regardless.Every cafe in Australia has this same arrangement. Tables spreading outside, crammed inside, fucken amazing coffee and often tons of people.
Ditto in most of Europe, both in cities and small towns.
Pretty much the only requirement is that the weather outside is good enough for at least part of the year and there’s enough room on the sidewalk.
since there are café, like this one in every other corner of Paris… and it is not a Paris things, all city/village in Europe have a decent number of café even in the less tourist area ever. A 2k habitant village, will have its central café. The moment the café goes away, is usually a sign, the village is dead
Surely the bottom picture should be an Italian piazza. French coffee culture is not much to write home about (they lean towards robusta rather than arabica, as that’s what their colonies grew) and the coffee you get in a pretty café in the touristy parts of Paris is going to be mediocre at best.
What’s that area surrounding the cafe called?
Streets, or in America, stroads.
You know that South Park clip where San Francisco is filled with dangerous levels of Smug and people who live there are addicted to smelling their own farts?
Completely unrelated, but for some reason I thought of that. Neither of these images would be me.
As soon as you land… leaving the imperial core… it is ssoooooo much better.
Not fair. 'Murrican Super Size Drive-in versus European Coffee House. The first can never win this game.
