Operation Buzzed: 171 Starbucks In One Day

It occurred to me that I hadn't done enough research, so I spent the next few months doing store and transportation research and training on my bike.

Starbucks was such an obvious target here in New York. You can't help but pass by dozens and dozens and dozens of them every day. When New Yorkers give directions on the street, they're always like, "Go to the Starbucks two blocks this way and then take a left and then you'll hit another Starbucks-"

I was talking to a Starbucks employee and I asked her how many Starbucks there were in the city. She didn't know, and a bunch of different people were giving me different answers, anywhere from 200 to 5,000. I e-mailed Seattle and they never got back to me. I just started trying to figure it out and finally determined how many there were. I just thought it would make an insane film to document my quest to hit every Starbucks in Manhattan in a single day.

Everyone tried to talk me out of it, and no one thought I could pull it off. In theory, it was almost impossible, but it was just an obsession for me. I get fixated on an idea and it just doesn't leave me. The fact people said I couldn't do it made me all the more determined. I knew it would make an interesting film either way, whether I succeeded or failed.

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One thing I learned out of it is that all the Starbucks are essentially the same. The only thing that differed was the clientele's personality, depending on which part of the city I would go to.