Being Alone Together

I'm not ashamed to say that I love Starbucks. Anti-globalization forces may hate me for it, but I find the sight of the familiar green sign a warm and welcoming invitation to pop in, order an Ice Mocha (even in winter!) and settle in for some serious reading or reflecting.

It appears that I'm not alone in enjoying this activity. Have you been to a Starbucks lately? These days, it seems easier to get a lewd instant message from a Congressman than it is to find a spare seat - let alone a table! - at your local Starbucks. Why is that?

It's not just for the coffee. Starbucks has shrewdly responded to one of our contemporary society's silent needs, which is to provide a venue for people to 'be alone together'. Look around the next time you're in such a place, and you will probably be struck, as I have been, by the number of people sitting alone at their tables sipping coffee.

Some of them are students, as evidenced by their text books and laptops splayed across multiple tables (can you tell that this is a pet peeve of mine?). For high schoolers, Starbucks is the preferred place for "studying" (in quotation marks because I'm not so sure how much studiousness is on display). After all, many high schools don't have large libraries like universities do, so the local cafe is filling a void in the social and scholastic firmament. University students seem to like Starbucks as well, eschewing the campus library for reasons relating to their stodginess and sub-par coffee perhaps.

Some of them are 'free agents', to use Dan Pink's term describing self-employed individuals who use such public spaces - especially ones with Wi-Fi Internet access - as their surrogate office.

Still others are people who use the coffee and company as fuel for contemplative tasks, such as writing their great American novel or catching up on this week's Economist.

I fall in the latter category. After noticing this habit, I began to wonder why I did some of my best reading or thinking there, and why Saturday afternoons at Starbucks became a sacrosanct part of my weekend schedule. It seems that such coffee shops offer the perfect combination of stimulation and silence for contemporary, attention-deficit-addled adolescents and adults. I've come to call this phenomenon the need for 'social solitude.'

First, there's the coffee. The invigorating effects of caffeine are obvious to anyone who has had a cup of joe, but coffee has both a soothing and stimulating effect on its drinkers. The feel of the warm mug in your hands after a walk in the brisk autumn air is comforting, while the aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans is to many both fragrant and friendly.

But that's only part of the story. Perhaps more significantly, Starbucks provides a semi-quiet place to read and reflect amid a whirl of social activity. Think about it: Starbucks are rarely empty spaces; in fact, they are often located at densely trafficked street corners to take advantage of significant urban footfall. If you're lucky enough to get a window seat at say, the Starbucks in Time Square in New York City, you can watch as literally the world walks by. Even if you don't happen to be in Midtown Manhattan or at the Coffee Bean on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, often the 'action' in the coffee house offers just enough stimulation to sate your thirst.

If I'm representative of the average young adult 'being alone together' in Starbucks, the common experience goes something like this. One reads or writes a number of pages in a flurry of caffeine-induced focus, but seeing as though we've all become a bit attention-deficit-prone our concentration wanes a bit. When distraction strikes, you have a number of options to steer yourself back on track. You can look up and take in the scene around you. I sometimes try to figure out what that couple sitting across the room might be saying to each other, or what the back-story could be behind that young lady pecking away at her computer for the past few hours. If you're a curious type, you can tune in momentarily to a conversation close by, and listen to part of the back-and-forth between two mothers discussing - what else? - their kids. If you're within sight of the door, you can watch the incoming flow of traffic and see if you recognize any of the newest additions to the social menagerie. Still another option is to strain and peer outside, catching a glimpse of the cars, people and pets that whizz by the window. Finally, there's the obvious alternative (and perhaps the most sought-after activity, from Starbucks accountants' point of view) of getting up, stretching your legs and trekking over to the barista bar to order another Mocha Frappuchino. Once you have been sufficiently stimulated, you can then go back to the task at hand for another concentrated stretch - until the next 'study break' beckons.

Starbucks has, it seems, become the adult university library for us all, providing a public place for an increasingly individualistic society. The iPod-wearing hordes who walk wordlessly down the urban arteries convene in venues like these to, in some sense, commune together over coffee and a curious yet contemporary form of company. In bygone days, people used to find community in parks, playgrounds and public squares. Today, that vision of civic society has been replaced by what Robert Putnam described so presciently in his 2000 essay as 'bowling alone.' The phenomenon I've described here of 'social solitude' is surely part of a larger societal shift from community to individuality, from 'we' to 'me', and it will almost certainly find corollaries in other popular personal | public behaviors from blogging to participating in social networks. I don't aspire to explain it all in this post, but merely to document one small aspect of it that I've discerned then open it up for consideration and debate.

The next time you pop in to your local coffee shop, look up from your paper or laptop for a moment and take in the scene. You might be witnessing one of the more profound socio-cultural shifts of this young new century. You might notice that, in the immortal words of Sting and the Police's classic Message in a Bottle, "seems like I'm not alone at being alone" ...