Delusions Of Grandé: Weird Stuff I’ve Seen At Starbucks

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It was a scene that could have been plucked right out of Rockwell’s 1982 unintentionally hilarious paranoid music video “Somebody’s Watching Me.” I was at Starbucks with my wife working on a project and I had that proverbial feeling of being watched. It was hard to not have the feeling since the guy watching me was also standing over me, brazenly auditing my computer activity. I looked up and our eyes met. Without warning, he snatched my laptop right off the table. My wife screamed. I did too.

Despite being packed with a bunch of people staring at their cellphones, as Starbucks usually is, nobody filmed what happened next. I suspect they were all frozen from shock as they watched the guy accuse me of hacking into his cellphone with my laptop. He also accused me of calling him a slave (he was a black guy, as am I–I was even growing an afro at the time–so the “slave” part was a little confusing). This guy was so convinced that he was being hacked that when Starbucks management called the police, he waited for them to arrive–so that he could report me! I have no idea how that panned out for him since his take didn’t square with the one the management told. I didn’t bother sticking around for the aftermath. My wife and I got the hell out of there. I went home and did a sketch of what happened. By this point, I had already done several dozen sketches just like this one.

My sketches began in 2011, after I abandoned my graphic design studio in Buffalo, New York, and moved to downtown Toronto to start a new life with my wife-to-be. I made Starbucks my new “office” space, which resulted in my spending way too much time there. Don’t ask me why I didn’t just work from home. Just know that for seven years I saw and experienced a lot crazy shit, all of which I documented as drawings. When I shared them on Facebook, people thought the stories were funny and I soon realized that I wasn’t the only person with crazy Starbucks stories. On the advice of many friends, I’m sharing a few of the drawings and stories here.

“Somebody’s Watching Me”

 

Babbling Goth Girl

 

 The Receptionist

 

Race Fight! Fight! Fight!

 

Funk Mission

 

Gentleman Junkie

 

Nude Outdoor Yoga

 

This scary motherfucker decided to do some half-nude yoga right in front of my window view. His breathing techniques included chomping the air. Nobody seemed to notice him but me. You may notice that my hair is fucked up. That’s because I had tried cutting it myself and did a piss-poor job.

Assault and Flattery

 

Boots and Boxers. Nothing Else.

 

Star Wars at Starbucks