Recently in Starbucks at Tampa Avenua and Victory Boulevard in Reseda Category

I roll into Starbucks a bit after 9. There's barely any line at all.

I ask for the venti drip, dark roast.

They actually have it.

The guy fills the cup, gives it to me, runs my Starbucks card through the register, I put in the half-and-half and I'm out.

And yes, it was good for me, too.

After weeks of laziness, I finally hooked up my Starbucks card to the free AT&T wireless Internet service available at many of the company's zillion stores.

The catch, such as it is, is that you must have a Starbucks card — one of those little gift-card-like things that can carry a balance. That card must have a balance, have been used recently ... and you get two consecutive hours of service:

Complimentary Wi-Fi for Starbucks customers When you register your Starbucks Card and use it at least once a month, you'll receive two consecutive hours a day of complimentary Wi-Fi, courtesy of AT&T.

Complimentary Wi-Fi for AT&T DSL customers
AT&Ts more than 12 million DSL customers already qualify for free Wi-Fi at their neighborhood Starbucks.

Competitive pricing for paid Wi-Fi
All other customers can receive two consecutive hours of Wi-Fi access for $3.99.

So if you already have AT&T broadband service, and if you live in the L.A. area, chances are good that you do, you can get the free Wi-Fi without even registering your card. (I have DSL Extreme, which uses AT&T's lines but its own routers and equipment, and thus doesn't qualify, but I figure two hours should do it for me.

For those hankering to know more about my experience from the technical side — and I know you do, especially you, Sharon Kaplan — I tested the broadband speed at this very Starbucks with the CNET Bandwidth Meter Speed Test and got the following results:

509.3 Kbps

That's not bad for 802.11b wireless. For comparison's sake, the average DSL connection promises bandwidth between 384 Kbps and 1.5 Mbps. My home connection used to hover around 1 Mbps but has been more 600 Kbps since an AT&T "repair" restored the connection when it was down, rendering it operable but slower.

But free and 509 Kpbs are totally acceptable things when grouped together.

And since this laptop, the venerable $15 Laptop, a 1999-vintage Compaq Armada 7770dmt running Puppy Linux 2.13 and the Seamonkey Web browser, has no battery (but curiously can accommodate two — one in the battery slot and a second in the CD/floppy slot), I needed electrical power and found it. Teat of Starbucks, I'm sucking on you pretty darned hard.

And in case you were wondering — and I know you were — they were out of dark roast when I reached the front of the line. The baristas were ready to make a fresh batch, but I'm tired of complaining and have resigned myself to a life marked by cup after cup of Pike Place Roast. I'm tired of waiting, tired of complaining, and free Wi-Fi is going a long way toward pacifying me.

Score one for Howard Schultz. I like free.

Starbucks, we need to talk.

After deciding that the "Coffee" portion of the name Starbucks Coffee was somehow an unimportant afterthought, and continuing a campaign of folly to replace your previous coffee choices with Pike Place Roast, I saw light at the end of a long, dark, watery tunnel.

Dark roasts would be brewed after noon at customer request. This after a period during which the worthless and weak Pike Place Roast (my opinion of the blend has dipped considerably of late) is the only brewed coffee offered during the afternoons.

Never mind that I seem to have trouble getting a dark roast in the morning on many if not most occasions at the various Starbucks locations I stop at during my travails.

Due to this dark-roast deficit, I've gone from, say three or four visits a week to Starbucks down to maybe one.

Let me be plain:

Your lack of coffee is driving me away.

Today I stopped at the Tampa Avenue and Victory Boulevard Starbucks in Reseda.

The line was long. Only two people were behind the counter. The wait was longer than five minutes.

I get to the front of the line. There's a dark roast on the board: Yukon. I like Yukon.

Me: "Can I have a venti drip dark with room?"

The barista goes to fill the cup.

A half-cup comes out.

Barista: "Would you be wiling to wait a few minutes until a fresh pot brews? It'll be free."

Me: "No thanks, just give me the Pikes."

She did end up charging me. I have no problem with that. I don't need to be getting free coffee. I need to be getting good coffee, and after a not-short wait in line, I don't need to be waiting — as I have at this location on more than two occasions — for them to make coffee.

I figured, maybe the Pike Place isn't as bad as I remembered it. At one point, I even said it's not as bad once it cools off.

Allow me to submit Pike Place Roast, as brewed on this day and at this location, for another review:

Horrible.

Howard Schultz, you can futz about the food, revel in your rock-star status and think you're saving the company.

If this Pike Place thing was your idea, just admit that it was a poor one and move on.

If the decision to abandon the drip-coffee business by further restricting the brewing of Starbucks' signature dark roasts was also your idea, just admit that it was a poor one and move on.

If these ideas were cooked up by other Starbucks executives and then OK'd by you, just admit that you made a mistake by willfully gutting your company's core product, do what needs to be done to fix the situation and move on.

You know, it ain't all that hard to make coffee, and I've been doing it more and more. Simone Schramm made a pot today, and I have a pretty good feeling that even though I bought the cheapest coffee in the biggest can I could find at Vons, that it holds up pretty damn well compared to this Pike Place travesty.

I feel bad for Pike Place Market, that iconic Seattle spot at which fish are tossed, for having its name cheapened by such a poor excuse for coffee.

Remember the House Blend? That's way better than Pikes. Even Breakfast Blend, which I'm not particularly fond of, is better. ANY dark roast offered by Starbucks is better.

Stop the bleeding, Howard Schultz.

You had a three-hour nationwide training session on how to make espresso, even though your company uses automatic machines to do so.

How about an eight-hour corporate meeting in Seattle.

Put this Pikes situation on the table.

Admit that Pike Place Blend doesn't measure up.

Start making good coffee again.

Do it for me.

Free WiFi is good, but it just another Starbucks Music, or scary-looking breakfast sandwich taking away from the core business.

Make the coffee. Just do it.