So Many Starbucks, So Little Time

Courtesy of Boing Boing (it's this little blog you should check out sometime), we discovered that Radar Online -- a.k.a. the magazine that refuses to die -- has an interview with Winter, a 34-year-old freelance computer programmer who has made it his life's mission to visit every Starbucks in the world. That's 12,000 and counting. An excerpt:

The primary rule is I have to drink at least one four-ounce sample of caffeinated coffee from each store. The store has to have actually opened for business; I can't get there the day before, when they have friends-and-family day and they're giving drinks away—in many ways that's kind of arbitrary. It has to be a company-owned store, not a licensed store. I have to drink the coffee, but there is no time limit on when I have to drink the coffee. But the longer I go without drinking it, the greater the risk that I might lose it. There are two stores I need to go back to in Washington State because I didn't finish the coffee—I lost it. I took it out of the store, I had it in a cup, and in the middle of the night I forgot I hadn't drank it all and I used the cup to relieve myself.

The day you hit 29 stores, what were the side effects?
Well, pretty early on I started developing a headache, I started feeling jittery. Later, because of all the liquid I drank, I started feeling bloated. Just looking at the little cup of coffee made me nauseated.

How many total ounces did you drink that day?
One hundred and four ounces and three shots of espresso. It hurt. And I lost an hour when my jeans ripped in the crotch while I was leaping up to a stone ledge to take a photo—so I had to stop at a mall to buy a pair of jeans. Toward the end of the day there were times when I felt like I was going to hurl, and I really didn't want to because I don't have a rule in place for what happens if I vomit. Would I have to go back to the store and drink the coffee? I probably would. So I definitely wanted to avoid vomiting.

It almost goes without saying that he's the subject of a new documentary:

Winter's tale has been made into a documentary film called Starbucking, which has played small festivals and will be released on DVD next year. During one day of shooting, Winter set a new personal best by visiting 29 different Starbucks in a single day.

Wanna know more? Check out Winter's website. (And if he'd gotten obsessed with Belvi Coffee, he'd be done by now.)