Dogsbottombottom t1_iwn10r5 wrote
IIRC that was the first starbucks in Portland, and people were unhappy enough about it that someone threw a brick through their window. 1999 maybe?
Edit: I guess it happened more than I thought
>Within a month this spring, during which Starbucks opened two new stores in Portland, vandals smashed the windows of one Starbucks store on four different nights. In the first incident, on March 18, a drunken man staggered out of a bar and pitched a bottle through one of the windows. He was arrested and pleaded guilty. The four attacks, however, says Portland police chief Michael Chitwood, apparently "targeted" Starbucks and were perpetrated by more than one vandal.
Others in Portland have expressed their antipathy without violence. Also this spring, a small group of young people protested at one of the newly christened stores in the city. One sign read, "Starbucks get out of town." A scathing column in a local newspaper, Casco Bay Weekly, inveighed against Starbucks for "quietly destroying the character of downtowns" and funneling its profits "back to the greedy mother ship." In an interview with Inc., Donna Peterson, a Starbucks regional marketing manager in Boston, said that the company's investment and operations in Portland have strengthened the economy and that the company has contributed thousands of dollars in products or cash to a variety of the city's charities.
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