Recently in Starbucks at Canoga Avenue and Oxnard Street in Woodland Hills Category

Today appears to be the day for Starbucks stores that are being shut down. That's buried in the comments over at Starbucks Gossip.

Supposedly there will be meetings today at the doomed Starbucks locations where employees will get the word.

For more on the Starbucks situation, go to this Starbucks Gossip post, which has links to the AP story, the Starbucks press release on the closures and the CFO's prepared statement.

I was over at the Canoga and Oxnard location today, and there's a bit of gallows humor afoot, at least on the customers' part, with a lot of "I hope this store doesn't close" kind of talk from the people in line to their favorite baristas.

And it is a nice crew over there, no doubt.

I have a cup of the Pike, and I'm not even going to bitch about it.

I even had my recharged Starbucks card at the ready so I can potentially take advantage of the free wireless Internet offer from the big coffee company, should I ever be toting a laptop, find a power plug because all my batteries are dead, actually have the time to sit at Starbucks and use free WiFi ...

And I know it's 111 degrees outside in Woodland Hills.

But I still want coffee.

I want the Starbucks dark roast of the day. Not Pike Place Blend.

But the very friendly barista at Starbucks, corner of Oxnard Street and Canoga Avenue in Warner Center says, "No dark roast, only Pike."

She sees the look on my face.

She elaborates, "There no dark roast after 12 noon."

I reply: "Ever?"

It certainly seems to be so.

For now, anyway.

That's one way to make the Pike Place Roast sales soar: offer nothing else. Hey, if it worked for the Soviet Union, it just might work for Starbucks.

The friendly barista took pity on me and wouldn't charge me for my hot venti drip of Pikes on this even hotter day. (Thanks! ... but what are those corporate people smoking?)

I can only hope that this is somehow related to the hot weather and that all will be righted when the ambient air temperature dips below 100.

I direct the rest of this entry to Howard Schultz, returning CEO of Starbucks:

It's called Starbucks Coffee. So make me some coffee. The good stuff.

Meanwhile: in other news, my neighborhood Starbucks is about to get some competition in the form of a Coffee Bean kiosk in the Ralphs market directly across Burbank Boulevard in Van Nuys.

I bet they have dark roast. Lots of it.

Same Starbucks, different day, no dark roast.

Once again, the Canoga Avenue/Oxnard Street Starbucks had Pike Place and House -- no dark roasts.

I tried the House today, and it's better than Pike Place. House has a little more character.

So I go to Starbucks yesterday, Canoga Avenue and Oxnard Street in Woodland Hills, pretty much across the street from the Daily News. I was much kinder to Pike Place Roast than I should have been. It's pretty weak. I mean that literally. But there's always the dark roast of the day.

Not so much.

My choices were Pike Place and House Blend.

No dark roast.

Starbucks, are you trying to kill me? This isn't going to help profits.

Actually, it is, because the very helpful barista suggested that I add a shot of espresso. That made it go down better, except for the fact that my $1.90 coffee now cost $2.50.