For the past few weeks, I've been living in Provo, Utah. Obviously there's been a bit of culture shock, since Provo is so Mormon.
But actually, one of the weirdest things about living here has been the culture of the local Starbucks coffee shop.
Back home in Sacramento, the Starbucks employees are all very clean-cut, and the clientele are mostly senior citizens and cheery, fashionable young adults. 80% of the conversations I overhear at my local Starbucks there are evangelical Christians talking about religion. (I think there's probably a church that runs some kind of accountability ministry out of there.)
Here in Provo, because of the religious taboo against coffee, Starbucks becomes a kind of hub for rebellious youths. The employees are all sort of surly emo kids. People loiter outside the store drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. I almost never hear any religious conversation there. Today I was sitting and reading, and the people on one side of me were joking about murdering people and robbing banks, and the people on the other side of me were talking about stealing cars and doing acid. I felt like I should call the police or something. "Hello, officer? I'd like to report that my local Starbucks is a hotbed of organized crime..."
4 comments:
That. is hilarious.
Sympathies. I moved back to Logan last year, and I can tell you that the coffee shops in Logan have the same feel. We have a little coffee shop on USU's campus, and you wouldn't believe the looks I get when I get to the counter and DON'T order a hot chocolate.
lol. That's funny. I would've expected the USU to be a little less conservative than that.
The same reaction a western person has when he sees boobs in Africa perhaps. Normal to locals that they don't pay attention to a naked woman, astonishing for the "advanced" western mind. The idea is: the more you forbid something, the more it becomes a sin.
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