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. There were certain Starbucks I went to that sold fruit, and that struck me as odd, because I'd never seen fruit in Starbucks before. One thing I did notice was the Paul McCartney CD everywhere-you can't get away from Sir Paul.
I'm really not a coffee connoisseur. Everyone that I work with got such a kick out of this because they know I don't drink coffee and never have. In training the weeks before the feat, I did drink some caffeine just to get my body used to it, and I do understand how people can get addicted. It's like a drug, and people have to go to Starbucks every single day to get their same drink at the same temperature.
I do like some of the drinks that take a little longer to make, but every second counted, so there wasn't time to have a frappuccino. I hit 171 stores and purchases, and by the end, I was sick. Medical professionals had warned me about serious health consequences, but I was mostly concerned about pulling it off in the bathroom situation.
I was up for way over 24 hours on that day. It really destroyed me because it was a hot summer day, and I was running around New York. After all that caffeine, my motor skills started to shut down. I was getting dizzy on the bike and was either going to hurt somebody or hurt myself. My eyes became really wide, my speech became slurred. I didn't know how I was going to go on. At that point, luckily, my friend in Brooklyn came and drove me around.
I watch the video now, and there are parts I don't remember because I was so out of it. I was so out of it, in fact, that I went to five stores twice. I honestly thought we went into 176 stores. I was convinced, and kept asking, "How is this possible?" So, I went through the receipts a couple days later, and realized I hit the same store more than once. That also says something about the sheer number of Starbucks there are. In New York, there's often two on the same corner, so it does get confusing.
In the end, despite my disorientation, I did make it. I was really relieved. I didn't consider giving up until maybe 1 o'clock in the morning. At that point I started thinking it was the most idiotic, bone headed thing I'd ever done. I knew it would make a good film, but I was so miserable at that point and started questioning if anyone was even going to watch this thing. It was my Mount Everest; I knew in my heart that even if I killed myself, I was going to do this. Once I hit the end of the road at 2:56 a.m., I just couldn't believe it. 171 is a big number, but until you actually do it, you don't realize how insane it is.
I put every transaction on my debit card and the final tally was $369.14. Eighty dollars of it was the pound cake bribe. There was a part in the video where I had to bribe a Starbucks employee open the door for me. I got there four minutes after it closed, and so I was banging on the doors. They wouldn't let me in. I would have been scared of me too. I was, like, shaking, wide-eyed and practically foaming at the mouth at 11:16 p.m. on a Friday night. Finally I offered them $80 for a piece of pound cake, and they let me in.
I didn't mean to get anyone in trouble-The media picked up on it and begged for the poor woman's job. She's fine; she got her job back and even got promoted, which is a good moral lesson for Starbucks employees: if you want to get promoted, take bribes. I got my $80 back too, which is nice.
Starbucks has gotten more out of this than I have if you consider all the free publicity. They've been very kind to me; I've met with them a couple times. I definitely don't want to become the Jared of the Subway sandwich commercials. I'm not interested in becoming that guy, but lifetime coffee would be cool, even though I don't drink coffee. Or maybe Mark Malkoff Day in a Starbucks or something. That's a good idea-I'll e-mail it to them.
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