Do Drink The Water

News item: Starbucks Coffee announced last month that it would offer wireless Internet access at all of its 4,000 locations. Starbucks' president Howard Schultz said he was not worried that free Internet access would encourage customers to sit for hours and engage in what reporters called "high-tech loitering."

Earth to Howard: E-mail home. You've gone utterly, completely, totally mad. First, I must confess that I am opposed to Starbuckification-the seemingly relentless march of chain stores that have put Mom and Pop out of business, turned New York City into a soulless Gaphattan and transformed our nation's landscape into one transcontinental strip mall.

No, I wasn't out there on the barricades in Seattle, hurling chairs through windows or chaining myself to a 14-year-old girl with purple hair-hey, I'm a passionless Yuppie, after all. But when a Starbucks finally opened in my quiet corner of heaven (also known as Brooklyn, N.Y.), my neighbors and I began a quiet revolt that should terrify Howard Schultz.

Instead of patronizing the new coffeehouse, my neighbors have treated it like a mini-San Francisco, lounging there day and night yet rarely buying more than one cup of coffee as a sort of "rent" on the comfy chair that they'll occupy for hours.

One friend even tells me that if she's out of milk for her morning cereal, she'll stop by the Starbucks that night and, for lack of a better term, steal some.

Yet Schultz says he's not worried about "high-tech loitering." Fool! You're being low-tech loitered to death.