DayCareDay! Café Review: Starbucks Kiosk in West Side Target
Another in a series of reviews of coffeehouses located near the hourly day care center where I take Henry so I can chip away, 3-4 hour chunk by 3-4 hour chunk, at my neglected dissertation. This review covers this past Thursday, possibly the last time we take Henry to said day care center.
Details: The Starbucks kiosk and seating area (shared with the pretzel-popcorn-nacho venue, no longer called “Food Avenue,” which bizarrely saddens me) inside the West Side Target, 201 Junction Rd, Madison, WI 53717-2615
Minutes to Day Care Center: 10-15, likely 15 with traffic.
Table size: I had trouble noticing, my table was too goddamned distractingly sticky.
Outlets: None. Portly children eating soft pretzels? Plentiful.
Internet Connection: I didn’t dare bring my MacBook out onto that sticky sticky table.
Taste of Iced Coffee, Price of Iced Cofee: See review of Starbucks on University, as, to their credit, Starbucks is invariably consistent (is redundancy like that permitted for emphasis?).
Proximity of Restroom to My Arbitrarily Chosen Table: I usually go to the East Side Target, wherein there is a general dearth of toilet paper and abundance of fecal matter on bathroom surfaces. So I try to avoid using the restrooms. But this was the West Side! Land of plenty! But I noticed that though there were nicer cars in the parking lot and the dollar section wasn’t nearly as prominently featured, there were plenty of portly children eating soft pretzels, and I suspect they are the kind responsible for the abundance of fecal matter on bathroom surfaces. So I abstained.
Best/Worst Aspect(s): Fill them in yourself. I’m sure you can imagine. I’m really pickin’ ‘em from the bottom of the barrel here. I know. Writing these entries has kind of encouraged me to try out some “new” places. Even, or perhaps especially, pretty crummy places. But intellectual pursuits at Target? Well I had to go to Target.* And, to be honest, it didn’t seem right to drive from the Target, with its own Starbucks, to a) another, autonomous Starbucks, or b) the Borders which contains a Seattle’s Best, a company which is owned, I believe, by Starbucks. The atmosphere of each of those café spaces being only marginally improved by not being housed inside a Target.
It also seemed like I needed something particularly spectacular for my (possibly) last entry in the series—we have a nanny now, we pay her the same as the day care, and Hank thinks she’s hilarious. She’s an old student of mine, and very cool. A good influence on Henry. And she COMES TO US. Meaning I can stay on the isthmus, far away from the fancy cars and constant construction of the West Side and the frigid temps and mermaidean eyes of Starbucks.
Potential Deal-Breakers: Portly children. Soft pretzels. Potential fecal matter.
Saving Grace: I fucking like Target, okay?
Price, Distance, and Atmosphere (Visual Learner’s Breakdown):
Um…the atmosphere thing? Not even worth trying to visually render.
*By “had to go to” I really mean that I came up with an excuse to go to Target (tub drain stopper thing broken, need to buy old-fashioned rubber thingie). And, as usually happens when I go to Target for one specific thing, I spent $200, and left without remembering to get that one specific thing. I am not even kidding you. I’ve done this so many times I want to revoke my own Target-going privileges.
