Not My Favorite Coffee Shop

Plasma donor at my least favorite coffee shop in Phoenix, Arizona

There’s a certain major-brand coffee shop down the street from us that I was happy to see opening since that meant that they’d be so much closer to where we live. Then the reality of their choice in location became apparent and now I can honestly say they could shut this one down and I’d be okay with that. You see, they opened on a corner in front of a mostly empty plaza with the other major tenant being a blood plasma donation center. Across the street on one corner is a school for those who couldn’t do traditional high school, a discount store, and an area of the parking lot is taken over by people waiting for a gig as day labor. On another corner is a title-loan store that preys on the poverty of the people in the area. The last corner is a battery store but next door to them is a fast food joint that takes EBT (a.k.a. food stamps).

Here’s the scenario that makes this coffee shop my least favorite: Young men (always men) with bad attitudes (damage from their ineffectual fathers) set up shop in groups of two and three and sell heroin (or opioid of choice) right from this well-known global brand. It most typically works with two guys in the shop and one outside. At some point, a person drives into the parking lot and the person sitting out front goes and gets into the car; they drive away. But these are junkies so they drive to the other side of a tire shop that has drive-through bays so you can see the car on the other side. They sit there for a few minutes and then the seller gets out of the car and walks back to the shop.

Back in the front of the place of the green aprons, one of the guys on the inside either heads out to sit down with the seller or he goes to the bathroom, and after a minute or so the guy outside joins him in the toilet. Five minutes later they emerge and the cycle repeats.

On the other hand, we have those who apparently have already been a member of one of these not-so-subtle circuses and are now a member of the blood plasma donation spot where they go earn about $40, depending on the needs of the market. The next stop, likely per the instructions of the vampires buying junky blood is to go hydrate at the coffee shop, but this is where the heroin is also easily available, wtf?

A bandage around the elbow, a large ice-water, and the blank stare at the phone with their head pulsing to the music is the way they roll.

It’s a shit-show here and this isn’t the only unfolding tragedy. This corner is a transit point for homeless people, the mentally disturbed, and a large number of the poor who cannot fathom paying $5 for a cup of coffee. It’s nearly impossible for me to find productivity at this location as I’m distracted by the cavalcade of personalities that in some way I’m enchanted with. I think that tomorrow I’ll return to the place where I can get things done.

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