In the latest Reason magazine, Greg Beato argues that Starbucks (SBUX) is, at its heart, radical. In fact, it’s “still the most radical thing to hit the coffeehouse universe in the last 50 years.”

What it needs to do, Beato says, is to stop trying to be “radical,” and just be … radical. Because like “Seattle’s other great cultural export from the early 1990s, Nirvana, Starbucks has always been most vital, most interesting, most revolutionary when at its most commercial.”

This isn’t just Reason magazine gleefully commodifying its dissent—as it often does by holding up capitalism as some kind of subversive idea to piss off liberals. Well, it’s a little bit that, but it’s also a real argument. And it’s partly right.

Over the years, Starbucks has repeatedly tried to prove its indie cred or to position itself as more highbrow than it really is. But those efforts are always shallow, whether they consist of trying to be a ‘zine publisher or trying to be a crunchy purveyor of “small batch coffees sourced from individually owned farms,” as it’s doing now with its unbranded, ersatz-independent coffeehouses.

But the company succeeds best, as Beato notes, when it is at its most middlebrow. That’s its strength. But when it reaches for “authenticity,” rather than just being authentically itself, it fails. None of the chain’s strained efforts can “match the truly radical act of installing espresso machines in bank lobbies,” Beato writes.

Nor can they match Starbucks’ initial bit of radicalism: avoiding the downscale hipster neighborhoods where coffeehouses were proliferating in the early ’90s (thanks, in part, to the existence of Starbucks itself) in favor of middle class neighborhoods, downtowns, and suburban areas. Back then, founder Howard Schultz “made sure to put his stores in the direct path of lawyers and doctors, artists on trust funds and writers with day jobs as junk bond traders.” And he stayed away from “fringe places like, for instance, Chicago’s neobohemian Wicker Park.”

He’s right that this was radical. But he’s wrong that it still is. I happened to live in Wicker Park in the early ’90s, and I was glad there was no Starbucks there. Or rather, I would have been glad if it had ever crossed my mind that it was possible. I had plenty of access to great coffee at funky (if not truly radical) places like Urbis Orbis, which hosted slam poetry events and folk-music concerts and whatnot. It’s gone now.

So, too, is Wicker Park Dogs, a tiny purveyor of cheap, delicious, greasy burgers and giant sacks of fries that was housed right in the vortex of Wicker Park’s hipness, the corner of Damen, North, and Milwaukee. There’s a Bank of America (BAC) there now. Not so radical. And across street is … a Starbucks. Neighbors include a high-end women’s haberdashery that was once home to Sophie’s Busy Bee–a funky Polish diner that had been there for at least three different demographic revolutions in the neighborhood, from the Poles through the Hispanics through the arty, cash-poor hipsters. Once the yuppies had taken over in the mid- to late-’90s, there was little demand for Sophie Madej’s pierogi or pork knuckles, and she closed up shop.

All these places were far more “authentic” than Starbucks is now, whether in its original incarnation or in its fake-indie one. 

Starbucks’ rise was indeed radical. But it won the revolution, which necessarily makes it the Establishment. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that (though the chain’s contribution to the spreading monoculture is a little depressing). Beato’s right that Starbucks should keep doing what it does best. But we can’t call it “radical” anymore. 

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Marion Nestle, unsurprisingly, likes Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative to fight childhood obesity, announced yesterday with great fanfare and lots of media attention.

“This is big news,” Nestle wrote. “I see much to admire here.” The initiative “focuses on kids” and “is sensitive to political realities (it’s called the uncontroversial ‘Let’s Move,’ not the inflammatory ‘Let’s Eat Less’ or ‘Let’s Eat Better’).”

Sure, it’s pathetic that “let’s eat less” and “let’s eat better” could possibly be called controversial, much less “inflammatory.” But the food industry and its compliant lackeys among the commentariat have always made sure that this is the case—in recent years, by yelling “nanny state” whenever the government moves to address behavior-based public health issues. But Nestle’s right—the careful language will help the program avoid all that nonsense.

Well, not all, but most. A quick scan of the usual suspects shows very little in the way of commentary on the issue. Perhaps they were too busy trying to convince us that bad winter weather somehow disproves global warming. There’s also the fact that the food industry isn’t fighting this one; so far, so it hasn’t sent out any talking points.

Still, when your whole life is devoted to opposition for its own sake, you can always come up with something if you choose to make the effort. So Julie Gunlock over at the National Review’s consistently nutty blog The Corner decided that, though she applauds Obama’s parent-centric message, it was wrong for the first lady to bring up her daughter’s improved weight (as both she and the president have done before) in discussing obesity. Also, she wrote, parents, not (oy gevalt) “big brother,” should be the ones to teach children to eat better and exercise.

Think about that again: Obama’s initiative is about childhood obesity, and Gunlock’s argument is that it’s great that the main message is that parents need to get more involved in solving the problem. But it’s somehow wrong for a parent to mention a child’s weight in such a context. Gotcha.

The “big brother” bit has to do with President Obama’s creation of a task force to review all of the government’s anti-obesity initiatives and create a report. We don’t yet know what the task force will recommend, but it’s already being described in Orwellian terms. (We assume the task force won’t be tapping our phones to listen to us making dinner plans. But you never know.) This even though the administration has made it clear that encouraging parental responsibility is central to its campaign. 

Nestle’s blog entry, by the way, also includes a nice set of links to various news accounts and bits of (sane) commentary about the new initiatives.  

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I’m worried this will keep me distracted for hours or even days. But then, it will also be highly useful to me on nearly a daily basis from now on. The USDA has created a “Food Environment Atlas,” which is basically a Google Map that users can manipulate to find out all kinds of things about America’s food system at both macro and micro levels, based on government data that can be mixed and matched with a click or two.

Just for example, you can see a coast-to-coast map depicting where grocery stores are dense and where they are scarce (note: that map might surprise you a bit), or fast-food concentration (above). Or you can see areas where a lot of poor people live and where the nearest grocery store is more than a mile away (food deserts). Or you can click down to the county level and get all the data for that county. There are dozens of data points in addition to those noted above, such as food prices, the number of restaurants, income data, and information on school lunch programs. 

The USDA explains the atlas here. 

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Pre-paid credit cards for teens

Imagine the opportunity here. A market which spends an incredible amount of time online, with (in most cases) nothing but disposable cash which is already topped up on a card and ready to be spent online – on whatever they choose.

The card is available to 13 – 18’s, costs only $5.95 to setup and can be topped up to a maximum of $1000 spend limit.

In a way, we could look at it as prepping the next generation of consumers, acclimatizing them to the process of shopping online.The card comes with a catch (albeit a very minor one), the holder of the card needs to have an active MySpace account.

Concert tickets, clothes, iPods, pre-paid pone credit, music – all the things that teens would typically have to ask Mum and Dad to buy for them, they will now have the flexibility to buy themselves online.

It’s great that ANZ have identified this opportunity, but perhaps it would be wise to extend the offer to Facebook account holders – not just MySpace.

With two thirds of all teens using some form of social networking site, the sky’s the limit.

When you think about this new generation of shoppers, and the existing online market – do you really have a reason not to take your business online?

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