Reflections From Starbucks

If you want to get the flavor of a neighborhood in DC, head to the closest Starbucks and observe the customers.  I live in Adams Morgan, a diverse neighborhood that turns into one of the city's busiest nightspots along its 18th Street spine of restaurants, bars, and nightclubs.  Here are my observations of the patrons of two different Starbucks in the general Adams Morgan area on a Saturday morning.

• African cab drivers communing before or after their shifts;
• Homeless men sleeping in the chairs and sofas;
• Gay men coming back from their early morning gym workouts;
• A gaggle of young women wearing the previous night's skinny jeans and Ugg boots;
• Older women talking on cell phones speaking a language I don't recognize;
• Hipsters walking their tiny apartment dogs;
• Lesbians walking their tiny apartment dogs;
• Professionals and students appearing to work on their laptops, but who knows what exactly they are doing;
• Parents with newborns that probably have designer names, owning the latest in stroller technology, and toting the trendiest of diaper bags;
• Young couples in almost matching workout clothes, drinking matching soy lattes, hauling their dry cleaning back to their Pottery Barn filled apartments or condos thinking that their lives are so interesting and important (okay, that is what I'm thinking they're thinking); and
• Me, a lonely middle-aged divorced man living in a crap apartment in a city he doesn't love while working a decent but unfulfilling job.

As I wait for my venti skim no-whip mocha, I can't help but think that I have very little in common with any of these people.