Counter Culture

Just call him Straus. A Boston area native, Straus has manned the Garage Starbucks for nearly the last three years, serving up delicious Frappucinos, lattes and other tempting concoctions to overworked and caffeine-craving Harvard students. In his time in the garage, he has served the likes of such celebrities as Ben Affleck, Natalie Portman ’03 and “the mom from ‘Family Ties.’”

He took a break from the post-dinner rush to have a cigarette and reminisce about some of the good times he’s had behind the counter:

“Well, when I first started working here, there was this other guy—let’s just call him Mr. Latte—and basically, any hot girl that walked in here got a free drink. Then he got fired, and the boss cracked down on us. So now only a select few get free drinks. But Mr. Latte...man...he was a rock star.

“Most of the funny stuff that went on here was because of us...like, this one time a pretty old woman—like mid-fifties I would say—walks in wearing this leopard-skin coat, and we’re both eating Ben and Jerry’s (about ten steps away from the Starbucks entrance) ice cream. So she asks if she can buy the ice cream from us and Mr. Latte is like ‘Well, we only trade services here.’ Then she looks at us, dead serious, and goes ‘Are there any services I can trade?’ I was pretty bugged out about

that one for a while.

“Mr. Latte and I also started the POYA (for those not in the know, the Pimp of the Year Award). It was a scoreboard of how many random notes or phone numbers we could get from the female customers. I don’t think we ever included stuff from dudes in that tally.

“Oh, and there were these five girls on the soccer team who used to come in and wear the coffee filters on their heads. They were just weird.”