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 Ryan Fan Club: If you don't know, I like my coffee black. When I go to coffee shops it's usually to work on some lyrics or a drawing because I like the attention it brings me. Steve "Don't Call Me Alvin From The Cosby Show" Medeiros: He also likes his coffee black, and he usually goes to coffee shops to read. He's never been kicked out of the circus and would probably encourage everyone to wear Billy Idol pajamas. Scott "Puddles N' Cuddles" Bryan: He's a double-double kinda coffee drinker, and that statement is backed up by the fact that he drove a pick-up truck for a few months. He used to do things for money like licking up mayo from the floor, but these days he's too concerned about getting the Hiv. Our first stop of the day was at Sipps at 3:30 pm. Scott was the first to arrive, then I joined him after renting some movies. Steve came by shortly after that and the bell rang. Metaphorically, anyway. We explained to the nice women working what we were doing and they seemed very interested in Coffee War 2007. Being the newest coffee shop in town, they were very eager to try and impress. Scott was actually a wild card in our group, and the ladies were nice enough to give me a piece of paper to re-create a scoresheet just for him.     Overall, we very much enjoyed our visit to Sipps and promised to return another time for more coffee. We all agreed that if every shop we went to were as enjoyable as Sipps that we would have a hard time picking a winner.     The Goat was busier than Sipps, and we never got a chance to tell the staff that we were doing Coffee War. That shame was overshadowed by the fact that The Goat has a liquor license and I could've had a beer if I wanted. That rules. There was a selection of toys on one side of the room for kids to play with, and I had to restrain myself from seeing if there were any toys I wanted to play with. The seats weren't comfortable, but the coffee was good, and there was definitely attractive girls there. Unfortunately, these attractive girls were probably way more intelligent than us, and that can only be fun to look at for so long. Third stop was The Second Cup at 4:54. We took a few minutes to look at some CDs in the music store. Already we noticed that we were starting to buzz a bit. Steve was sampling discs and relentlessly skipping from song to song like a madman. I was flipping through DVDs, trying to see if John Stamo's "Born To Ride" had been released on DVD yet. And Scott was probably looking for some horror movie with Jenna Jameson because that's all he's talked about for the last three weeks. Second Cup had it's ups and downs. I like the decor of this location, and the music is just right. I had the Paradiso Dark Roast and Steve joined me in that selection. Scott was daring and had the Hazelnut Cream. We each had to use the bathroom and were a little put off by the fact that we needed a key to do so. Steve actually commented that he felt like he was back in pee-wee hockey again. I knew that if I was going to put more coffee into me I'd feel like I was in Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Today's secret word is CAFFEINE! SCREAM REAL LOUD! Our table was wobbly, and my cup was dirty, but we overlooked those fine points because the two girls working were attractive.     We each had a donut here to mask the taste of the disgusting coffee, and some food was a good idea anyway. The highlight of Tim Horton's was the "Healthful Hints" sign on the wall. What the fuck... Then we went to Starbucks at 5:45 pm. And this is where everything went topsy turvy. Not just because we were already full of caffeine. Not just because we were hopped up like the Kool-Aid man in the summertime. No... over the years the three of us had developed an "Anti-Starbucks-Ism" inside of us. I'm quite partial to the video on YouTube of the old man shouting "Stick it up your ass Starbucks!" And thus we went inside. Scott made a dash for the bathroom for another pee. Steve and me (Ryan, don't forget that name!) went to the counter. We were greeted by two very cute girls, and a guy with long hair who was almost mistaken for a cute girl. The following is a quote from the conversation:     "We have two smalls. Which one would you like?" That really fucking through me off. Why would they have two smalls? Why not have small and extra-small? I mean, there's an extra-large, so an extra-small seems rather appropriate. I didn't go into the finer details of sizing and naming sizes. After all, the cute girls and the possible lost member of Hanson were just doing their job and don't name the coffee or subsequently the cups. And if they are reading this I would hope they look into the notion of "extra-small". It would save me a fortune on Advil. We continued to explain to the main girl at the cash what Coffee War 2007 was and what we would be doing with our results. She liked my Buckcherry shirt and took a Ryan Fan Club button, but most amazingly she gave us our coffee for free. Talk about scoring some extra points. Don't worry Ryan-Fans, we tipped them well for their support. We each drank the Caffe Verona. If free coffee, great eye-candy, a possible rare Hanson member appearance, and comfy seating wasn't enough, then Holy Friggin' Hell our new Starbucks Friend even brought over a bag of coffee grinds for us to take home...FREE! I don't own a coffee maker cause I drink instant, and Scott does the same, so we sent the grinds home with Steve. As we left Starbucks, something came over us... something not unlike the feeling the Grinch has when his heart grows two sizes... but probably more like the feeling The Ultimate Warrior used to get when people actually liked him. We were impressed. Starbucks had totally made us eat our own beliefs.     That cure was beer. For you see, if you go out and drink a bunch of beer you can cover the smell of it with coffee. So we used deductive reasoning to apply the theory that beer would cover the odor of coffee. We split a pitcher of beer at The Brass and while my comrades had wings, I ate some fries. We pooled our results together and compared Score Sheets: Read my scoresheet here. Read Steve's scoresheet here. Read Scott's scoresheet here. And the results? Did we pick a winner? Well, there were a lot of winners in one sense. Us three boys won in a sense that we went the distance and actually drank a coffee at every shop in the downtown area. The shops all won in a sense that I'm saying good things about all of them (except Timmie's) on this site. But really, there can only be one winner. We narrowed it down to Sipps, Starbucks, and Coffee & Company. These three had similar tasting coffees and similar atmospheres. So we then added in the staff factor. The people at Sipps were totally crazy and outrageous and we had some good laughs with them. And I can't begin to describe how great our service was at Starbucks. Coffee & Company was a little tamer in that department, so we knocked them out of the race. It was down to two shops... and in the end, we picked Starbucks as our winner. So congratulations to Starbucks for winning Coffee War 2007!
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