“Guess where I am!” a woman shouts into her cell phone. “Where is one of your favorite places? Starbucks….I’m in the original…the very first Starbucks! They said this is where it all started. Pretty cool, huh?”

Entering the original Starbucks, one is struck by the store’s simplicity. No tables, no big, cozy chairs, no fireplaces. Just coffee, and a little something more. For Starbucks devotees, the chain represents a culture, a way of life. And this is the chain’s birthplace.

Starbucks is tucked away right in the middle of the major tourist attraction that is Pike Place Market and people from all over the world collide inside. German tourists to the left, Korean tourists to the right, but all speak the language of coffee. Parents hand their children cups of hot chocolate that dwarf their tiny faces. The children take the drink, clutch it with both hands and leave with huge smiles imprinted on their faces.

Outside Seattle’s first Starbucks

Photo: Helen Freund

A barista tosses a cup across the store toward the espresso machine.

“Grande nonfat Mocha!” he yells as the cup sails into the hands of his fellow barista. The coffee grinder roars into action.

The store is crowded, filled to the brim, but no one seems to mind. People chat in clusters as they wait for their drinks to be called. Not even the screeching frappuccino maker can drown out their conversations.

“Grande mocha for Sue!”

Sue fights her way to the counter to fetch her drink, sweeps the cup off the bar, takes a long sip and makes her way out the door.

With over 9,000 stores worldwide, this Starbucks is somehow different than all the rest. As the barista puts it, it has the “original feel . . . . Come and get your coffee!”

According to baristas who are schooled in the chain’s history, Starbucks founders Gordon Bowker and Gerald Baldwin, tired of having to buy their coffee from San Francisco, opened a coffee stand a few blocks up from where Starbucks now stands. By 1973, they were asked to join the Pike Place Market. Howard Schultz then joined the company in the early ‘80s, after discovering espresso on a trip to Italy. He added his discovery to the store’s original menu of roasted coffee and teas and the culture of Starbucks as we now know it was born.

Just outside the store, customers take pictures of each other in front of the Starbucks logo. They have to maneuver their way around Brother Willie and the Market Crew, a local group of a cappella street performers that can often be found belting out their Southern gospel in hopes of making a dollar.

Customers line up at the Starbucks at Pike Place Market.

Photo: Helen Freund

But today, there is no singing.

Adorned with salmon colored pants and a stack of papers, a bald-headed man, responsible for booking some shows for the group, approaches them and a dispute breaks out over the group’s appearance at an upcoming show.

"Don’t F@*# with me! Don’t even!” the manager yells shuffling through his stack of papers.

“We’ve got a show at the same time,” a group member pleads.

“The show’s at six to nine for 300 dollars” the manager says.

“I ain’t gonna sing for 300 dollars!” another member shouts.

Customers continue to flood out, some stopping to look at the group’s CDs for sale on cardboard boxes, but don’t stay too long as the rising tension shoos them away.

“This is what we do…make money. This is the only job I’ve got!” a member shouts.

“You’re talking to me like I’m tryin to rip you off!” the manager contests.

“Are you?” a member says as the rest laugh. “When I work…I work hard and I sing hard! I’ve been down here for 15 years!”

The local a cappella group, Brother Willie and the Market Crew, can be found outside Starbucks at Pike Place Market on most days around noon.

Photo: Helen Freund

Eventually, the group starts to sing again and their sweet sounds begin to draw a crowd. Couples sip their coffee and exchange kisses. Two girls dance in the street. Kids clap along. Everyone somehow feeling like they’re somewhere other than where they are. The coffee warms their bodies as the music seeps in to warm their souls.

Two men visiting from Washington, D.C. stand off to the side of the store, trying to avoid the crowd, chatting as they wait for their friend to get his caffeine fix.

“He’s all hyped up about the first Starbucks!” one of the men says as he points inside to his friend waiting in line.

“We came here just to see the original Starbucks” the other jokes. “We can leave now…let’s fly back tonight!”

Their friend emerges with a drink in hand. “Just like McDonalds,” he says. “Consistent quality.”