Why Midtown is Better Than Royal Oak: A Tale of Two Starbucks

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*Encounters at two Starbucks - one in Detroit, one in Royal Oak -  provoked an epiphany about gathering places, demographics and how the interplay between these factors influence how people behave toward each other. 

But before we get into that, if you're on a Mac,  for the love of god, please change your monitor's color space to sRBG. Trust me. Its the right thing to do.  If you're not sure how to do it, go here

Part One: A Distinguished Gentleman

Researchers at MIT recently proved that not even time can escape the gravitational pull of a Xbox 360. So, when I need to pull free from the productivity-killing siren song of Grand Theft Auto IV, I bike to a nearby Starbucks in Midtown Detroit.

What I like most about this Starbucks is the way it serves as a nexus for people from all walks of life: med school students; other photographers meeting with perspective clients; city council members; and the occasional disheveled, quaintly aromatic stranded traveler who just needs 37 cents to ride the Night Train home.



Even better than the patrons, is the always friendly staff. The night manager is a 20-something black dude who is always kind, soft-spoken and - perhaps most importantly in a location with this kind of clientele - willing to firmly yet politely direct weary "travelers" to take their fundraising campaigns outside.

This is the first Starbucks location in our mini epic, and the place where I encountered Thurston Renner-Thomas a few days ago. Thurston is a pharmaceutical sales rep from Sierra Leone by way of Europe. He's one of those dudes that is so tall, that you can tell he's tall even when he's sitting down. He also the kind of guy who obviously thinks about his appearance; even his bright red earbud cord seemed the perfect counterpoint to his grey-blue pinstriped suit, and his deep-brown complexion.

I immediately recognized that this person, in this setting, with this palette of colors meant I had to break free of my early-morning antisocialism, and approach him for a photograph.

I asked and he obviously agreed. I explained I started The People of Detroit because I was displeased with media's unbreakable fixation with all things wrong in the city. To exemplify this fixation, he started to search for the name of a Detroit documentary's trailer he'd seen recently.

"Detropia?"

"Yes! That's it! They would make you think the city was a warzone."

Detropia is a film by the directors of the Oscar-nominated "Jesus Camp."  Neither Thurston nor I had seen Detropia in its entirety, but I trust the vignette the filmmakers chose for their trailer is representative of the film's overall tone. If my trust is well-placed, then they would in fact make you think the city is a warzone.

Much of it is.

I'm not a blind booster for Detroit. I'm more than familiar with what's wrong in the city.  I grew up in the kind of neighborhood that makes big-time New York City documentary filmmakers and internationally-acclaimed French photographers alike moist with Oscar and MOMA exhibition ambitions. Since I spent most of my early years looking at decay, my focus as an adult is elsewhere.

The ghetto is most attractive to people who have never had to live there.

I gladly cede all of the city's abandoned buildings and hollowed souls to pathos-starved out-of-towners. Eat until you are bloated with accolades, renown, and other people's misery.

My focus is elsewhere. I'm interested in art that buoys the soul. I listen to jazz more these days than I do rap. I'm interested in people who are enthusiastically pursuing their passions. I'm also interested in the interaction between people who have realized a certain amount of success and people who are still in its pursuit.

I've lived - for a few weeks at a time - in Chicago, New York, and Shanghai, China. Of all the places I've visited, the best places are places where successful people live along side people who aspire to succeed.

This Starbucks is a microcosm for this kind of place and a microcosm of Midtown. Its the kind of place where an impeccably dressed, educated, worldly pharmaceutical sales rep inhabits the same space as a middle school kid who ducks into the shop to avoid waiting for the bus in the cold.

That middle school kid is from the kind of neighborhood you'd see in a Detroit documentary. He and Thurston come from two different worlds, but when they arrive in a community like Midtown, they stand on equal footing.

Maybe that kid takes note of Thurston the same way I did. Maybe he sees Thurston and is forced to re-imagine what success looks like. Maybe it forces him to rethink what he's come to accept as a masculine ideal.  Perhaps he realizes a man can project strength as surely with quiet refinement as he can with flamboyant crassness.

The opportunity for this kind of cross-cultural exchange is what makes gathering places in urban neighborhoods like Midtown so desirable. Conversely, the lack of this opportunity can lead to catastrophic encounters... like the one in the next leg of our odyssey.

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Part Two: "Would You Like Room for Racial Animus?"

I mentioned earlier that I'm not a blind booster for Detroit. Well, I'm also not one of those people who lives in the city and eschews all things suburban. I f-ing love Trader Joe's. In the summer time, I'm one to bike from downtown, up John R all the way to Royal Oak to visit one of the other places I love: Barnes and Noble. Which makes the egregious events of mid-January 2012 all the more disappointing.

On January 15, my lady and I drove 12 miles from downtown Detroit to enjoy an afternoon of coffee and magazines at that Barnes and Noble. After picking up a few magazines, we went upstairs to the bookstore's in-house Starbucks.

We sat at adjacent tables; each having roughly the surface area of an extra large pizza. I joked about how small the tables were. I then moved my table closer to my girl's. 

We were getting settled in and figuring out what we wanted to drink, when a Starbucks employee [who we would later learn was the shop's manager, Heather] abandoned two waiting customers, marched out from behind the counter and instructed my partner and I that we were not allowed to push tables together.


As my girl went to point out a group of women behind us who had consolidated two much larger tables seemingly in violation of Heather's edict, Heather preempted her by explaining that those people were members of a "book club" that called two weeks in advance to secure special authorization to... push tables together.


Heather then walked away to attend to her line. My partner and I kind of looked at each other, mouths agape, in shock at Heather's irrational request. Each of the tables we occupied, were designed to accomandate one person and their belongings (laptop, books, etc). This means it was completely irrelevant if they were pushed together or not; since only one person's belongings could fit on the tables in the first place. Oh, then there's the fact that other people were doing the very thing Heather said was not allowed:

   

But wait, there's more.

After my companion and I did not immediate heed Heather's frappuccino fatwa, she abandoned waiting customers yet again, to restate her command, this time adding, if we did not comply we would be asked to leave because we "weren't customers."

At this point, the righteous indignation set roiling at Heather's first intrusion into our lives, finally overran my commitment to civility and I - in so many words - invited Heather to go have conjugal relations with herself. 

Heather apparently took umbrage at my vacation suggestion. She responded by calling the police. Naturally.

I guess Heather thought I was the kind of "Detroiter" who would shuddered at the thought of law enforcement. The best thing about not being a criminal, is not being afraid of the police.

"Call em."

I was taking the pictures you see above as the police arrived. I packed away my camera, vowed vengeance on Heather, and exited the store via police escort.

Part of me wishes I had remained calm, even after Heather's relentless unprofessional, provocative, irrational, contemptuous behavior. What would she have done if I sat calmly and refused to heed her ridiculous commands? What would she have done without any excuse to call the police? Would she have called them anyway? That would have been something to see.

Then again, part of me is glad I checked this wayward barista. Maybe she'll think twice about making untoward demands on unfamiliar "Detroiters." This would be good for her because the next "Detroiter" she pulls that on may have more than just unkind words for her. So, I guess in a way, I did her a favor.

You're welcome, Heather.

I imagine, however, if Heather was accustomed to being in the same space with people who are unlike her, she never would have harassed us, and there never would have been occasion for me to get upset in the first place.

Perhaps if she had such occasion, it would have moderated her unjustified apparent sense of her own superiority - if not nullifying it altogether.

Anyone who knows me, knows I'm not one to reflexively accuse people of racism. I'm not especially preoccupied with race as I realized long ago that humans beings at their core are just stupid, tribal apes who enjoy sorting themselves into groups of "us" and "them." Race is just one trait among many used to form those hierarchies.

Once you understand that all human beings are hardwired to subjugate other human beings for a wide variety of reasons, racism tends to no longer be your go-to explanation for ill behavior.

That said, when you get into a conflict that may have a racial component, you're usually left without any reliable way to infer the person's motives. You're left asking yourself, was I mistreated for some reason unrelated to race or is it because I'm black?

This, however, is one of those rare incidents where there is scientific evidence of racism. There's photographs of a control and experimental group. Controlling for all other variables, the only difference between Group A, and Group B and C is race. We can therefore reasonably conclude that race was the motivating factor behind Heather's behavior.

On the drive home, I started thinking about how our experience with Heather differed from my experiences around where I live in the downtown/Midtown area. What I realized, is that in 6 years of living in this area, I've amassed friends from a wide variety of backgrounds - working class whites, upper class whites, Africans (the continent, not the country), Saudi students, black Americans, people who are descended from Gypsies (seriously)  - and I've never had a incident like this occur (in fairness, I haven't had many instances like this in the suburbs either. Most of of the people I encounter in Royal Oak and other burbs are friendly if not indifferent).

I asked myself what was the key variable that makes this event even possible in Royal Oak and practically unthinkable in Midtown (as an aside, my girl went to high school in Royal Oak and said she'd been told to not metaphorically "push the tables together" in one way or another dozens of times during her school days).

I concluded the variable was demographics. The demographics in Midtown are such, that no one group predominates. As a consequence, no member of any one group feels empowered to act with impunity.

Someone like Heather would be far less inclined to pull this kind of stunt at a coffeeshop where she was surrounded by "Detroiters."

It is this sense that that everyone is on equal footing, that makes Midtown better than Royal Oak. Obviously, I'm over simplifying for the sake of narrative impact (I doubt anyone would have read a article titled, "Mixed-income, culturally diverse urban areas are more likely to promote cross-identity, pro-social behavior than homogenized suburban enclaves"), but this statement nonetheless accurately reflects a long-held if not thoroughly vetted sociological premise (though most of the academic material seems to focus on the benefit to underprivileged groups, and not the benefit everyone derives from living around people from outside their social class).

I'm sure my grand epiphany is old hat to some of my urban planning and social policy friends. Its also an idea I've heard in passing but never explored extensively. I suppose even if I would have looked further into it, one can read about theoretical social phenomenon, but no amount of reading quite leaves the impression that is left when a social phenomenon rides roughshod into real life.

When this incident happened, I vowed to do everything in my power to make sure Heather was fired.  In light of my epiphany, I think it would be even better if she was transfered to Midtown.

<<<Fingers Crossed>>>


Update [03/02/12]

Nearly a full month after contacting Starbucks customer service, I have not been given a final resolution from the company regarding this issue. I've decided to leave the following message on Starbucks' Facebook Wall:

"On January 15, 2012, my companion and I were at the Royal Oak Barnes & Noble Starbucks. A manager there named Heather told us that our tables could not be "pushed together" without her expressed, prior permission.

When we did not immediately comply with her command, she called the police and had us escorted from the premises.

I am a photographer and writer in Detroit. I wrote a essay detailing the entire incident on my photo project's site. The entry is the most widely-read in the two-year history of the project: 

http://www.thepeopleofdetroit.com/2012/02/why-midtown-is-better-than-royal-oak.html 

I contacted Starbucks customer service on 2/09/12 regarding this incident. I asked that they follow up with a resolution for this matter. I have not yet heard a response. 

The behavior of the Royal Oak Starbucks manager stands in direct opposition to your company's publicly-stated progressive ideals. I expect the manager will be excised from your organization."

I believe the Starbuck's manager's behavior was unacceptable. If you agree, tell Starbucks so:

https://www.facebook.com/barnesandnoble
customerservice@bn.com

- Noah -

Noah Stephens founded The People of Detroit in April 2010 as a counterpoint to media fixated on despair and disrepair in the storied birthplace of American auto manufacturing. Since, TPOD has received national and international attention. Portraits from the project have appeared in Bloomberg BusinessWeek and other national publications. In early 2011, a creative director saw the project online and hired Noah to shoot an ad campaign for McDonald's Corporation in Shanghai, China. 

The People of Detroit Photodocumentary is funded in part by a grant from CEOS for Cities and the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation.