The Very First Starbucks Store

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While this probably goes without saying, the location that I was most excited about stalking while vacationing in Seattle this past May was the very first Starbucks store at Pike Place Market.  As I’ve mentioned countless times in the past – and as anyone who knows me even slightly well can attest to – I am an absolute Starbucks fiend!  I visit my local branch at least twice a day and am on first name basis with all of the baristas who work there.  Heck, some of them even read my blog!  🙂  So, when it was decided that the Grim Cheaper and I would be taking a mini-vacay to the Pacific Northwest to do some stalking and visit with our friends Kerry and Jim, I let it be known right away that there was absolutely no way I was leaving town without seeing the very first Starbucks store in person.  And, let me tell you, I could NOT have been more excited about it.  On the morning we were scheduled to stalk the store, my fiancé woke me and said, “Are you ready to visit your Mecca?  Be sure to bring along a prayer rug or something so that you can pay your respects while there.”  😉  All joking aside, though, it really was a very special pilgrimage for me as I had always promised myself that one day I would get to Seattle so that I could stalk the store that started it all.

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In the interest of integrity, though, I should mention here that the store which actually started it all is no longer standing and that the Pike Place Starbucks, which is generally touted as being the company’s first location, was actually the chain’s fourth.  Confused?  I’ll see if I can break it down.  A couple of years ago I read a FASCINATING book by Taylor Clark called Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture.  Besides sharing interesting tidbits, like the fact that “coffee is the second-most-traded physical commodity in the world” (oil being the first), the book chronicles the long and storied history of the now-ubiquitous coffee giant.  The first Starbucks outlet was actually opened by three men – history teacher Zev Siegl, Boeing programmer Jerry Baldwin, and writer Gordon Bowker – on March 29, 1971 in Downtown Seattle’s Harbor Heights building, which used to be located at 2000 Western Avenue.  And while the store did offer free drip coffee samples, the place was not actually a cafe, but a walk-up wholesale coffee bean vendor.  There were no espresso machines, no comfy couches on which to linger, no pastries or desserts on offer in glass cases, and no music playing on the stereo.  But even without all the extras, Starbucks was a success.  By the time the owners of the Harbor Heights building decided to raze the property in 1974 (the building that currently stands on that site is pictured above), Starbucks had already opened two additional sister stores. 

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With their current location facing demolition, the original Starbucks store moved a few doors down to 1912 Pike Place (pictured above), making the first store the company’s fourth.  I know, I know, it’s confusing.  “Starbucked” author Clark explains it best: “The rundown building that once housed the first store was knocked down in 1974, so they built a new one a couple of blocks away, right across from the public market.  But in the meantime, the three founders had opened new stores near the University of Washington and on Capital Hill in 1972 and 1973 – making what’s now called the “original” the fourth store by chronology.”  Ironic, huh?  Crazier still is the fact that Starbucks mega-mogul Howard Schultz didn’t come into the picture until 1981.  He was working as a housewares salesman in New York at the time and had noticed that one of his customers, a tiny coffee chain in Seattle, was selling more of a certain kind of drip coffeemaker than Macy’s!  He flew out to the Pacific Northwest to learn more about the then-unknown coffee company and was immediately taken with it.  A year later, he left Manhattan and moved to Seattle in order to go to work for the small chain.  The rest, as they say, is history.

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It’s amazing to think that a chain that currently boasts 17,743 different stores in more than 50 countries (there’s even a branch on the Great Wall of China! – not kidding!) started out as one tiny, little storefront in Seattle.  Thankfully, that storefront has been left largely unaltered over the past 36 years and looks pretty much exactly like it did back in 1974 when it first opened.  As Clark points out in his book, though, with its plank-wood flooring and weathered wooden countertops, the store more closely resembles a Peet’s Coffee shop than it does a Starbucks.  There’s a reason for that, though.  Dutch coffee roaster Alfred Peet, founder of Peet’s Coffee Company, actually helped Siegl, Baldwin, and Bowker get started in the business, and they modeled their first location after the original Peet’s store in Berkeley, California.  I cannot even express how happy I am that the original store has been left untouched and was not remodeled to fit the cookie-cutter Starbucks mold over the years.

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The Pike Place Starbucks also continues to use the chain’s original logo – that of a split-tailed mermaid with bared breasts, encircled by the words “Starbucks – Coffee, Tea, Spices” – an image which was deemed too risqué when the company went corporate.

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To commemorate the store’s historical significance, there is also a brass post which reads “First Starbucks Store, Established 1971” on display at the front entrance.  Love it!  I wish they had a post like this on display at movie locations, as well!

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And there’s even a map on the wall of all of the Starbucks locations worldwide.

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But besides being the most unique-looking of all of the Starbucks stores, the Pike Place location is also the only one in North America which still hand-pulls its espresso shots, making for a more authentic coffee experience.  (The other stores switched to automated espresso machines a few years back.)  The Grim Cheaper was especially enthralled with watching the baristas craft the espresso by hand and took countless photographs of them.  All of the baristas were also extremely friendly and knowledgeable about Starbucks – and coffee in general – which I absolutely LOVED.  It was fascinating to speak with them about the history of the store and the company.

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I absolutely cannot tell you how cool it was to be standing there ordering an iced latte at the very Starbucks store which started it all – definitely a moment I will never forget!  And I have to say that even though the place was jam-packed with people, my drink was made in record time!  I honestly cannot recommend stalking the first Starbucks enough!  For those who don’t want to wade through the hordes of stalkers there, though, there is – of course – another Starbucks store located just around the corner from this one.  😉

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The first Starbucks store is located at 1912 Pike Place in Seattle.  The location of the former Harbor Heights building, which housed the very first Starbucks store but has long since been torn down, can be found at 2000 Western Avenue.

The “Sleepless in Seattle” Houseboat

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Another Seattle area location that my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry stalked for me a few weeks back was the houseboat where Sam Baldwin (aka Tom Hanks) and his son Jonah (aka Ross Malinger) lived in one of my favorite romantic comedies of all time, 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle.   I just re-watched Sleepless last night, actually, in order to write today’s post and was absolutely amazed at how incredibly fabulous the movie still is, almost two decades after it was first released!   It’s a classic and I honestly cannot tell you how much I LOVE it.  Like LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!  In fact, I can still remember exactly where I was when I first saw it seventeen years ago.  It was the summer of 1993, I was sixteen years old, and my parents and I were vacationing in Santa Barbara.  While shopping on State Street, we stumbled upon Paseo Nuevo Cinemas, saw Sleepless on the marquee, and decided to buy tickets.  I actually still have my ticket from that day, in fact, in a shoebox somewhere in my closet.  In the years since, I’ve walked by that same movie theatre countless times while visiting the Santa Barbara area and each time I do the memories from that day never fail to bring a smile to my face.  So, when Kerry mentioned that she was going to stalk the Sleepless houseboat, I just about died.  Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see that place in person!  So, I decided that, even though I have yet to stalk the house myself yet, I just had to blog about it.  Thank you, Kerry!

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In Sleepless in Seattle, Sam and Jonah Baldwin leave their home in Chicago and move into the Seattle area houseboat pictured above in order to make a fresh start after losing their wife and mother, respectively, a few months prior.

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In real life, the Sleepless in Seattle houseboat is located in a gated community of sorts in the Lake Union area of Seattle, Washington (actual gates are pictured above) and is, sadly, not at all visible from the street.  Typically, the only way to catch a glimpse of the place is if you travel by it by boat.  Thankfully, though, as I’ve mentioned before on my blog, Kerry isn’t one to be easily deterred.  As luck would have it, there was an open house in the neighborhood on the day Kerry stalked the place and so she was allowed to wander right in past the main gate!  YAY!

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As you can in the above screen captures and photographs, the houseboat looks almost EXACTLY the same today as it did when Sleepless was filmed over 17 years ago!  In fact, the only differences I noticed were that the front door is currently painted a bright red color and that the fencing around the back patio has been changed from metal to wood.

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The four bedroom, two bath houseboat, which was first built in 1978, was apparently for sale in 2008 for a whopping $2.5 million, but I was unable to discern if it was ever actually purchased by someone or if it is still currently up for grabs.  If you look at the home’s interior photographs on its real estate website, though, you can see that the inside was not used in the filming of Sleepless.  Although the interior of the real life home and its onscreen counterpart bear a striking resemblance to each other, you can tell by the location of both the kitchen and the stairway leading up to the second level that they are not the same place.  In real life, the inside of the houseboat, which measures 2,075 square feet, is also much larger than it was made to look onscreen.  I am guessing that the entire interior that appeared in the movie was just a set that producers had built on a soundstage somewhere.

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If you’ll notice in the above picture, though, the little bench that Sam sits on at night in the movie is there in real life, too.  So LOVE it!

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I am happy to report, too, that the mailboxes seen in the flick are in fact the community’s real life mailboxes and that they look very much the same today as they did back in 1993 when Sleepless was filmed.  YAY!

Big THANK YOU to Kerry for stalking this location!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The Sleepless in Seattle houseboat is located at 2460 Westlake Avenue North in the Lake Union area of Seattle, Washington, right next to Boatworld Marinas.  Please remember that the home is located in a private community and do not trespass.

The Michael Buble Suite at the Best Western Alderwood Hotel

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As I’ve mentioned numerous times on this blog, my celebrity crush as of late is Canadian crooner Michael Buble.  I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the guy and his music!  So, when my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry went on a business trip to the Seattle area a few months back and noticed that her hotel, the Best Western Alderwood, had a “Buble Suite” she immediately called me up to let me know.  And, as you can probably imagine, I practically had a heart attack right there on the spot.  It was at that point that I vowed to someday travel to the City of Lynnwood in the southwestern portion of Washington State to not only stalk the Best Western Alderwood, but to also spend a night in the actual “Buble Suite”.  Especially since Michael filmed his “Haven’t Met You Yet” video at the Killarney Market in Vancouver, Canada which is just a short two hour drive from the hotel.  (See the kind of stuff my fiancé has to deal with?  It’s amazing I was ever proposed to!  When I first told him of my intended Seattle travel plans, I believe his exact words were, “You want me to drive you two hours to see a grocery store?”  Needless to say, I doubt we’ll be making the trip to Lynnwood anytime soon.)   Anyway, Kerry didn’t take any photographs of the hotel for me on that particular trip, so I begged her to stop by there on her next visit to the Seattle area, which she did last month.  Thank you, Kerry!  And while I don’t typically blog about locations that I haven’t personally visited myself, this one was just too good to pass up.  🙂

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The Best Western Alderwood is not your typical five-star, celebrity-laden lodging, but from from what Kerry was able to gather from the super nice people she spoke with, Michael Buble, who hails from nearby Vancouver, is apparently a longtime family friend of the hotel’s General Manager.  Sometime in the past couple of years, the singer stayed on the property – in Room Number 107, to be exact – and afterwards the General Manager named the suite in his honor.  Which is something I really think all hotels should do!  I mean, how GREAT would it be to know the exact room numbers where certain celebrities have stayed at different hotels all across the world?  You can bet I’d be booking the Jennifer Aniston Suite at every hotel I stayed at if that was the case!  😉 I actually think it was pretty common practice back in the day to name hotel rooms after the famous guests who had stayed there and I, for one, think that practice needs to be brought back!  Stat!  So, kudos to you Best Western Alderwood!  May all hotels follow suit!  Kerry also found out that some of Michael’s family members frequently stay at the BW Alderwood, as well, so if you happen to check in there and spot an MB lookalike, chances are it might be his relation!  🙂

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But not only did the hotel name a room after the cutie crooner, they also adorned the wall behind the front desk with his photographs, autographs, and other MB memorabilia.  SO LOVE IT!  You don’t even understand how BADLY I want to see all of this with my own two eyes!   I was practically salivating while looking at Kerry’s photographs!  Hopefully I’ll get there someday! 

On a Michael Buble side note – For those who missed his “Hamm and Buble” skit on Saturday Night Live back in January, you so need to check it out – and can do so by clicking above!  It’s absolutely HILARIOUS!  I swear I’ve seen it about twenty times now and literally never get tired of it.  Love it!

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Big THANK YOU to Kerry for finding this location and stalking it for me, twice!  😉 

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The Best Western Alderwood is located at 19332 36th Avenue W in Lynnwood, Washington.  The Buble Suite is Room Number 107.  You can visit the hotel’s official website here.  His “Haven’t Met You Yet” video was filmed at the Killarney Market which is located at 2611 East 49th Avenue in Vancouver, Canada.