Starbucks

It is a retail confrontation: McDonald's versus Starbucks, a real-life struggle pitting a fierce fast-food chain with 30,000-plus stores against a fierce gourmet coffee chain of more than 14,000 outlets. The world is their playing field. Some contend these two companies aren't direct competitors. But as they seek to increase profitability and expand worldwide, it is inevitable offerings and style will morph a bit. There are only so many ways to drink and eat quickly, short of intravenous feeding.

Let me begin by saying I'm a big fan of Paul McCartney's and hope he keeps rocking until they finally stick him in a nursing home and the other residents start shouting every time he picks up his guitar: "Paul, enough with `Lady Madonna'! We're trying to watch American Idol here!" Let me also wish him well during his coming divorce proceedings against what's-her- name, the ex-model hussy he married after Linda died, the one who's trying to take him to the cleaners when she isn't twirling and making a spectacle of herself on Dancing With the Stars.

Anticipating the privations of Prohibition, Baltimore's most celebrated journalist and critic sold his automobile and used the cash to stock up on the best wines and liquors he could find. H. L. Mencken then protected his cache in a homemade vault in the basement of his Hollins Street home. On the vault's door was a sign with a skull and crossbones and this dire warning: "This vault is protected by a device releasing chlorine gas under 200 pounds pressure. Enter it at your own risk." While Mr. Mencken's enthusiasm for alcohol-based fuels seems decidedly retro in our abstemious age, his decision to voluntarily give up his car had some solid logic behind it (and some useful implications for us today)

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier Ishmael Beah Sarah Crichton Books / Farrar, Straus & Giroux / 229 pages / $22 New York --Ishmael Beah thought he'd seen enough miracles in one lifetime when U.N. officials helped him move at age 17 to America, far from the African civil war where he'd been a 13-year-old soldier. Settled with an adoptive mother in New York City, he did well in high school and graduated from Oberlin College. But his good fortune was only beginning: Not only did Beah find a publisher for his subsequent book about his childhood, A Long Way Gone, but the memoir attracted enormous media attention, including an excerpt that became a New York Times Magazine cover article.

Next month, a 3-foot Starbucks logo will adorn the historic Main Street facade where inside Revolutionary schemes were once traded over draughts of ale and cider. The opening of the city's third outlet of the worldwide coffee chain in late March will cap a year of securing city approvals and renovations in the Maryland Inn - but it is not likely to decaffeinate the controversy. For a few critics, including Mayor Ellen O. Moyer, another link of the worldwide gourmet coffee chain was about as welcome as the British Redcoats back in Washington's day. She called the idea "a missed opportunity for something really special."

Downs Engravers & Stationers 2500 Boston St., Canton Hours: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. 410-752-7770 Looking for a clever card for Valentine's Day? How about some fine paper for those Christmas thank-you notes you never got around to writing? You might find what you need at Downs Engravers & Stationers' new, 1,000-square-foot store in the Flagship Building at The Can Company in Canton. (To find it, locate the Starbucks on Boston Street. It's a few feet away.

SEATTLE -- Determined to show that it has taste beyond the espresso bar, Starbucks will market a new book to customers beginning in October. Called For One More Day, it is the latest novel from author Mitch Albom, who wrote the best-selling memoir Tuesdays with Morrie. The campaign marks the latest effort by Starbucks to connect its customers with entertainment recommendations, where it has compiled a mixed record. The coffee retailer began selling selected CDs in stores two years ago, and had a big hit with the Ray Charles CD Genius Loves Company, which it helped finance and market.

The Annapolis Historic Preservation Commission unanimously approved proposed changes to the Maryland Inn's exterior last night, clearing the way for a Starbucks coffee shop to open on the ground floor. A wheelchair-lift access plan, previously a sticking point, was presented by project architect Shellie H. Gazlay. Jean Tullier, an Annapolis-based spokeswoman for Remington Hotels, which manages the 1780s-vintage inn, said yesterday, "This is the last hoop for them to jump through." The five-member city panel approved without debate other changes to the hotel facade, including a Starbucks siren logo -- 3 feet in diameter -- new windows, landscaping and removal of the existing stairwell where the wheelchair platform lift will be installed.

Starbucks is renewing its efforts to put a 21st-century coffee shop in the 18th-century Maryland Inn in Annapolis. The idea drew protests when it was first raised a few months ago, but the Seattle-based corporation has modified its plan and won some important supporters for the idea of opening a high-end coffee shop in a place that once housed a tavern visited by George Washington. The Annapolis Historic Preservation Commission is scheduled to consider tonight proposed changes to the property's exterior to accommodate a Starbucks-licensed store - similar to a franchise.

For as long as I've been swilling coffee, my philosophy on the stuff has remained constant: Give me regular joe for regular Joes. I don't need all these fancy high-priced "specialty" coffees strong enough to leave you twitching at your work cubicle for a week. Don't need no lattes, espressos, cappuccinos or frappuccinos. Don't need no sleek plastic cups with little paper sleeves and space-age lids and little green emblems that feature the Goddess of Macchiato, or whoever she's supposed to be. Don't need no stinkin' baristas, either.