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Brandon tells us in a wry, self-effacing way that he took us inside because "the press likes to tape these meetings and make us look stupid," and we all chuckle sympathetically. He also tells us the following things: not to climb up on the risers, because it will make the picture shake (rolling his eyes to let us know he knows this is stupid); not to wear jorts ("Whoa, a lot of questions after the jorts thing"); not to answer any questions we might get from the press; that "it's all about Patty Murray"—the troubled Senator whose reelection campaign the Prez is coming to support—"that's why people are coming, right?" and we chortle and guffaw in a knowing way because he is acknowledging the ridiculousness of the political process while also reasonably asking us to respect it; that he was also a communication major like us (that is how we got recruited to be volunteers at the speech) and if anyone knows where his college (St. Edwards) is, "you get to meet the President," and we laugh, which is a nice way of telling us that we are not going to get to meet the President; and finally, if there are any other embarrassing questions. There are not. We laugh at this, too. It does not occur to me until later that none of these questions were as embarrassing as would be a question along the lines of, say, "cut or uncut?" I am mostly glad I did not think of this at the time.

We follow him outside like smitten little puppies and he gives us a perfunctory overview of our duties before drifting off to check his mobile phone, which has a label on it. I can't see what the label says.

* * *

While walking across the quad to get to my bus, I see a reporter/cameraman pair blocking my path and swerve to avoid them but they have already intercepted someone else. Their target is, worryingly, a blonde boy wearing a white t-shirt and riding a skateboard and carrying a briefcase. I have no good explanation for why he has chosen this particular combination of characteristics other than one which is simultaneously meaningless and perfectly explanatory: he has done so because he is in college.

"Are you going to vote?" the reporter asked him.

"Absolutely," he said. "I plan on registering very soon."

* * *

At home that night, I think about how Brandon (squee!) told us that the White House press corps would be there, and that the White House press corps consists of 50 people who would be housed in a separate building from where the President was speaking, and I think about how absolutely Looney Tunes this is. I already know what the President is going to do: he is going to give the exact same speech he has given at every other campaign stop, except that he will say nice things about Patty Murray. The odds that he will not do this are so small that it hardly seems worth sending someone to cover it; whatever money you might miss out on from not covering the big unusual event that will happen once out of every thousand times can't possibly be more than the amount of money an organization has to pay to send a correspondent and/or a camera crew and/or a photographer on Air Force One. It's like if every single network had to film the Kardashians at every moment of the day, rather than just relying on E! to let us know when something particularly noteworthy happened. I guess it's a sort of status thing, but geez.

Maybe it's just that we, as Americans, feel better knowing that, in the middle of this wonderful clusterfuck of a country where who-knows-what is going on at any given moment, there is one human being whose every activity we know about with as fine a grain as possible. It doesn't matter if those activities are repetitious or boring or pointless; all that matters is that we know they happened. It is as if only by engaging in a ritual recitation of one individual's experience of reality are we able to continually assert that such shared reality does, in fact, exist; that there is more than just the pictures in our heads, dancing on their own.

* * *

On the bus to campus the next morning I sit down behind two first-year students and I resist putting my headphones in because I am reporting. And good thing, because I love them! They are a baby gay with a Beiber-flop and a fab straight girl with vanishing amber highlights and purple nail polish. He has a map because he wants to find places to explore and she keeps telling him to put it away because they will have an adventure. At one point she suggests starting a filmmaking collective (!) and when he demurs she calls him "Mr. Indecisive" before doubling back and explaining that her mother always called her bossy. (She also suggests they go camping, because we are in the Pacific Northwest. "Do you have any, like, camping clothes?" she asks him teasingly, and I am glad that she is making it all about the costume.) When they get out, I see that the girl is wearing all black with a blue plaid flannel shirt and the baby gay is wearing a slim-cut suit with a crewneck white t underneath, because he is going to a political speech, and holy shit, I want them to be literal BFFs. I hope it all works out for them.

I get there half an hour late but still half an hour before we're actually going to do anything. Our hosts are now two people from the Murray campaign named Rhonda and Lars. Rhonda and Lars are nice, but look frazzled. ("Rhonda and Lars," Rhonda said yesterday after Brandon introduced them. "It sounds like a power duo.") After all the talk about security yesterday I am expecting a thorough screening but instead we are given laminated badges hung from white yarn, like we are a bunch of kindergarteners on a field trip to somewhere bright and sticky. Rhonda and Lars send us away, on vague missions to direct the press to their proper entrance. I position myself as close to a leanable surface as possible.

Eventually I need to pee and head over to the workout center. I see that there are people using the elliptical machines at 8 in the morning. I imagine they feel like I do when I am using the elliptical machines while people are going to a football game—something along the lines of "what the fuck is wrong with all these assholes?"—but mainly I think that anyone who works out at 8 in the morning can't be very fun to hang out with, especially if they are doing so instead of attending an Obama speech.

This is one of the many times in my recent life I have been glad not to be young: while everyone else either sticks priggishly to their positions or kind of skulks away resentfully when they want a break, I just stride off purposefully when nature calls, because I am old enough to know that this is legitimate, and I don't really care about being punished. But mainly I am just old. The other volunteers are all undergrads, which I think probably means I missed some sort of important social cue at some point in the process.

Here is what I wrote in my notebook about the experience of spending two hours outside, watching people go by:

• "This is like a parade of adorableness!"

• Elderly couples with one hand holding a sign and the other holding the other's hand!

• Shy, excited girls in hijabs!

• Brassy middle-aged lesbian couples!

• Star-spangled hats!

• Nine-year-old girls with "OBAMA!" signs hand-drawn with magic marker on posterboard!

•Black ladies in their Sunday best!

• Four-year-old boys with slicked-down hair in full suits!

The day is young but we are all young, or feeling young, giddy and free. When one of the volunteers—the aforementioned Z—gets bored with her job and wanders over to hang out with me, she comments that "It's funny his approval ratings are so low but people still come and camp out overnight." I decline to debate the point on the approval-ratings thing, but she's certainly right about the excitement level.

Z's mom arrives, hoping Z will be able to get her in backstage. I assure her that at these sort of giant organizational gangbangs the best way to attain admission is to show up at the last minute, look non-threatening, and ask the most harried-looking person politely if you can come in. (Though not in so many words.) She strikes up a conversation with the campus cop guarding the nearby entrance. He is friendly enough that he has already shown Z pictures of his kids, and the two chatter away while Z and I discuss the perils of parents on Facebook. When Z's mom comes back she has the cop's phone number and gives it to Z with the suggestion that she give him a call "if you ever get into trouble." This makes me miss my mom, and I end up calling her later. (She is fine.)

As it gets closer to start time the other volunteers congregate where Z and I are; we huddle together, warming ourselves. One girl, S, sees another girl approaching and they do that whole high-pitched "hiiiii!"-and-hug thing that girls do. S tells us later that this other girl is her sorority sister and the student body president. She is also the daughter of the state attorney general. "So it's, like, in her blood. But they have very different views." S was very excited for her friend after she saw her friend's Facebook status indicating that her friend is going to introduce the president, and we all coo in appreciation of this achievement. "She'll totally get to shake his hand," one of the girls says. "Oh yeah," says S.

As it will turn out, her friend is not introducing the president, but the county executive; I receive no follow-up report as to her hand-shaking activities. There is probably some message here about politics, but she seems like a nice enough girl and I wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavors.

* * *

Once we get inside, we are confined to the press pen, which is pen-like enough to have a wide-open grazing area in the back leading to a narrow chute that takes you to the side of the stage, where there is a platform for photographers. (I assume this is where the media ritualistically slaughtered a bald eagle before we were let in; certainly it is where I would have done so.) A guy is playing songs over the PA from an Apple laptop and I really want to offer him my iPod instead, because he is really leaning on some old dogs like "No Surrender" and "I Won't Back Down." When I get bored, I make a mix of songs that would be better, albeit extremely ill-advised.

A gospel choir gets up and sings "God Bless America" and "Stand By Me" and, oh God, "Amazing Grace." Seattle usually does not like to admit that black people exist except as crime victims, so their presence here makes the whole thing seem like we're trying too hard, like when you do too good a job cleaning up your apartment before your parents come over. You know they're going to walk in and think "Oh, bullshit he dusts his wainscoting on a regular basis" and then smile and say "Oh honey, your place is so nice!" instead, and the wainscoting probably isn't comfortable in this situation either, if you know what I mean, but in grand post-racial fashion, we've all decided to pretend like we don't fundamentally distrust each other while dad's around. Eventually the choir gets down and the crowd starts to do the wave, because they are bored. Two Pacific Islander girls are sleeping on each others' shoulders.

I go to the bathroom which is through the basketball team's locker room (UW stickers on the soap dispensers, in case they forget where they are, I guess), and when I come back, there are thousands of Patty Murray signs fluttering amongst the crowd, distributed from who-knows-where. The whole thing gets going in earnest: a Marine leads us in the Pledge, and the aforementioned student body president takes the stage. At one point she says something about how "the cynics" don't think young people will vote, and a gay near me yells "boo cynics!" which I like for all sorts of reasons. She tries to lead us in a call-and-response chant of the candidate's name, but while the first "Patty!" "Murray!" exchange goes fine, the crowd picks up a rhythm on its own and keeps chanting "Murray!" and the speaker has to scramble to keep up and interject some "Patty!"s at the right places. The crowd is beginning to become... self-aware.

She introduces the county executive, who tells us to update our Facebook status with something about voting, and then he introduces a Congressional candidate who says "I am also a Husky!" and my Tourette's starts acting up; when she says "We need to make things better!" I have to tap my fingers to avoid yelling "Talk specifics!" She seems nice, though, and I do learn that apparently everyone wants to sell electric cars to China, judging by the crowd reaction to her proposal of this plan. She introduces a sitting Congressman named Norm Dix who my notes say is a "Shatner-looking motherfucker," and he gives a pretty great speech in which he brings up Bush a lot. When he mentions that he took classes at UW from a Keynesian, me and the guy next to me chuckle knowingly, and I notice he is Twittering up a storm. This means we are both giant nerds. The crowd tries to get a "six more years!" chant going, but it fades away quickly, too self-conscious to self-sustain.

So then (whew) Norm introduces the governor, who gives an even better speech in which she leans hard on health care, gets cheers for "Our troops are coming home from Iraq," boos for how the other side is "scooping up donations thanks to the Supreme Court's decision," and laughs for "Look at the candidates they're putting forward!" She gets a very successful "Patty!" "Murray!" chant going. Then she leaves and the Secret Service sweeps the podium, and we all know what's coming. The crowd can't decide what to chant and eventually settles on the wave again, because who doesn't like the wave? The White House press corps files in behind us in the pen's chute, led by Brandon, and the excitement level generally ramps up. I see someone from the Washington Post, and want to talk to him about their coverage of the health care debate, but think better of it. The DJ plays either Amerie's "Gotta Work" or the song it samples, Sam and Dave's "Hold On, I'm Comin'" and it works like a charm. We are pumped up.

Then Obama comes in with Murray and the place goes nuts with flashbulbs all over and ladies rending their garments and grown men weeping and like that. Obama takes off his jacket and rolls up his sleeves very deliberately while people cheer, and he waves. Murray gives a good speech and gets a great call-and-response going where we get to yell "No!" which is always fun, but no one really cares. We can't even hear her introduction to Obama; we know what's coming, and we go insane. Someone yells "I love you!" and Obama says "I love you back," which we really like. Squee!

The beginning of the speech is weird because the speech doesn't really matter. Everyone in the place, no matter their role, is using it as a photo op. The photographers and camera guys are all jockeying for shots on the risers and trying to get different angles around the press pen, and everyone in the crowd is taking pictures of Obama, sure, but also everyone in the crowd is trying to get shots of themselves with Obama. Like the very attractive mixed-mixed-race couple in front of me, who take pictures of each other with their backs to Obama and then take pictures of themselves with their backs to Obama and then look at the pictures and comment on how attractive they look in these pictures of themselves with the President also in the frame, and everyone is doing this. They don't just want to document that Obama was here, they want to document that they were here, seeing Obama. The crowd is now making its own rally, shouting different things both at Obama ("Repeal don't ask don't tell!") and at each other; pockets of alliances form and disperse and small social gatherings sprout up in every section of the building.

And I realize that what matters isn't Obama's speech, but his mere presence. Despite the loudspeakers, it's not his voice dominating the room. It's the fact that he is here, with us. His presence makes this time special. We have made it special, taking time out of our days (it is around noon on a Thursday) by missing class or work to come here and wait for hours to get in and see this particular event. We have changed our routines. This is an abnormal event. Which means it's like a festival, or a carnival; a celebration less of what we're celebrating than of us, and the fact that we exist.

I am thinking profound thoughts along these lines when Obama looks directly at me and locks eyes and I realize that, in that moment, when I am face-to-face with the most powerful person on Earth, I have my index finger halfway up my right nostril. This is probably the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me.

Perhaps spurred by this rather disrespectful and also gross gesture, Obama brings it back. He uses his considerable gifts to distract us from the visual in favor of the word, rolling into his familiar metaphor of the car in the ditch with palpable glee. He has fun with it, diddling the details around rhetorically and playing with us, teasing us with the punchline we know is coming. And the crowd comes together in this moment, led on by our leader, focused suddenly on what he's saying. The festival is harnessed to a practical purpose by this particular power of charisma, ritual, style. When he hits it—when he yells "You put the car in D!"—we go nuts all over again, responding this time not to his mere presence, but to what he has done to us.

When it's all over, the DJ plays Brooks and Dunn's "Only in America," which was George W. Bush's campaign song. I walk out the press entrance and back toward class, where we will discuss the particular authority bloggers have, and how it is constructed. I am walking side-by-side with a family.

"What did you like best?" the dad asks his son.

"I liked the wave!" the son says.

The dad tries to correct him. "Didn't you like how he found accessible ways to talk about complex policy issues?" But no, the kid's right: the wave was great. Who doesn't like the wave?

Mike Barthel has written about pop music for a bunch of places, mostly Idolator and Flagpole, and is currently doing so for the Portland Mercury and Color magazine. He continues to have a Tumblr and be a grad student in Seattle.

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You'd never think of this elsewhere in the country, but the megatronic coffee company sells wine and beer, which feels to me about as likely as Ahab himself gently poaching a baby branzino in court bouillon. Is this the humming monolith of corporate America, quietly sticking a free-trade, post-consumer stake right into the heart of the last good thing we had left?

Wine Fidelity
I called Starbucks PR-actually, I called a "Starbucks company spokesperson," who initially thought I was interested in learning more about "wi-fi." No, wine, I said. And five minutes later, we agreed it best if they just got back to me by email.

"We looked at the natural progression of our business and the way we have transitioned over the years and recognized an opportunity to establish a different kind of Starbucks," the shadow said. I think that means "times are tough and we've gotta find a way to make some beans."

I could tell we weren't getting very far. I wanted to know more, and there was only one way I would. I had to get a man-one with a birth certificate and free will-on the ground.

"There are two stores serving wine and beer," he said, "one of which I'm sitting in right now, called 15th Street." [Actually, it's 15th Avenue, Agent 714].

Intrigued, I pressed on. Come on. Sure, there's wine. Everybody's grandfather has a jug of Carlo Rossi in the basement. That doesn't make it a wine bar.

No, that's not how it works, my contact cautioned. "The baristas are knowledgeable and can talk about different styles, such as the chardonnay being less oaky and more crisp in nature," he said. They even have glasses shaped specific to reds and whites, which plenty of decent wine bars don't.

But, wait, it was noon my time. That made it.... Seattle Special Ops, what are you doing in a wine bar at 9 a.m.?

"When we first came here I was a bit dismayed to learn that my new favorite cafe was owned by Starbucks," he said, "but I preferred it to the others because the staff are inclusive and will share their knowledge about coffee."

Oh, right. It's still a coffee shop.

What's in a name? About 18 billion dollars.
By first branching out under a new brand-15th Ave. Coffee and Tea-Starbucks tested the waters without the threat of backlash. Then, not unlike how I ran off to Paris at 18 before crawling back broke to mom and dad, baby's gotta come home.

According to the Seattle Times, future stores will be branded Starbucks. The ungendered PR entity behind the curtain added that the next iteration of Olive Way, Seattle's next store to transition to alcohol, "will be a traditional Starbucks location that will reflect the character of the surrounding neighborhood and help to reduce environmental impacts." I didn't really ask about the environment, but it's nice to know they care.

You can see the dissonance building, even from their language. How could such a powerful, 18+ billion-dollar company often more concerned with sounding right than being right, possibly pull this off? They have enough money to do whatever they want, but why?

Here's where I start to buy the corporate speak. They're doing it because we need it. Because wine bars outside of wine country in America generally fall into two categories: terrible and privileged.

We're not in northern Spain, and while a lot of our bars do an impressive job, we're not the freewheeling, drink-wine-because-it's-there society we could be. You get hackjobs and you get greatness, but there's usually no wine "local" we all head to at 5:30 on a Tuesday.

Starbucks stands to change that. As you went from Folgers to fresh-brewed to macchiato to maybe even a working knowledge of "free trade" and "single origin," we may someday be in position to make everyday wine a larger part of our patois. The sameness Starbucks will bring, much as it did with coffee, can be precisely its source of innovation.

If they succeed, our definition of local will be unifying for American wine. The American Viticultural Areas scattered throughout the Northwest and coast-as well as upstate New York, New Mexico, and the South-could fit more broadly into an understanding of American wine in general instead of the cult status they each have today.

Why I am so sure? Because it will be right on your corner, directly across the street from another one!

Regional, and what that means
When Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz got sent off to Milan and watched a barista pull a fresh shot topped with oily, tooth-staining crema, you could say he had vision. His jowls were wet at least. And whether that was at the prospect of bringing great coffee to the states, or just the potential of making millions of gondolas (Venetian, I know) full of money, it's fair to say that the new vision of Starbucks was a sense of place.

Now they're a giant corporation serving coffee in countries that always preferred tea. But forget, for a second, the whole multi-national, hypercapitalistic thing. Let's just look back to how it really started: a cup of coffee in Italy.

The Pac-Northwest is Schultz' new Milan. So a store influenced, in some ways reborn, on the notion that Oregon and Washington wine is irresistible couldn't be more right.

Yes, I assume there will be cost-cutting. Pressure from The Board someday. There will be P and there will be L.

Still, there's not one damn winemaker in God's country not dying to get on the Starbucks list, which as of last week had four Washington reds and a white each from Washington and Oregon. That's not from among a giant list of mass-market global brands. Save for one Argentinian malbec and some bubbles, that was it.

According to our Special Ops agent, "the baristas select wines using a similar method they do coffee," actually having a voice in the bottles they serve. If that continues, they may be developing a new model for mass wine distribution, one that caters more to the expanses of our taste than the limitations of our wallets.

"As we open these stores, we definitely look to bring in local influences," the Voice of Starbucks told me. I'm gonna hold you to that from behind your curtain, Oz.

Quality. Control.
Have you ever ordered a glass of wine at a regular bar? You may have been better off throwing it over some tomatoes and fresh mozz.

If the coffee is any sign, the quality of whatever wines Starbucks carries will be surgical-grade-sharp, clean and never failing. The new stores brew "drip" coffee one cup at a time. Whatever you think about the taste, there's no questioning the standard.

Consistency is the brand itself. You get that with a knowledgeable staff and a short wine list (something I've been begging for from the country's best restaurants). In business terms, you limit the failure rate, but in real terms, you give every store manager and barista some ownership.

I hand-sold wine for several years myself, and I can tell you that, even today, there's been nearly nothing more gratifying than having someone enjoy a wine I recommend. And customers would tell me there was nothing better than to have someone who really loved what he was doing share his knowledge.

Before I get all teary-eyed, my point is that the mindshare at these new locations will really be the key to their success. And that will ultimately put us in control. Unlike coffee-the fine knowledge of which I appreciate but have very little use for in my daily life-whatever we learn about wine at these locations can become part of our everyday interactions over dinner, at happy hour, and at those cocktail parties that today make most of us so uncomfortable.

The PacNWers are a prideful, and accomplished, folk
This isn't 1970, and there are no "Boys Up North" anymore. The Eyries and Ste. Michelles are a solid 30 vintages in, and since then hundreds of wineries have joined them, planting the entire gamut of pinot noir in Oregon, cabernet sauvignon and syrah in Washington, and everything else. This is a vast, storied, and successful lot.

When I asked one winemaker, he called himself a farmer. I'd argue some are chefs.

If we could task one community to shepherd what will become a highly commodified, common wine retail business, it would be them. Much in the same way Schultz hoped to bring the pride of European coffee to America, he now may have the opportunity to light up the neighbors just outside our own backyards. So long as Starbucks keeps this local mindset, it will stay true to the vision. And I'd argue, if he wants to succeed, he'll have to.

These aren't just winemakers he's dealing with. They're farmers. And farmers have pitchforks.

You already have your favorite wine bar, and you can still go there...
...the same way you support your mom'n'pop cafe, but buy three venti lattes downtown before you get home. The liquor licenses will be a roadblock, especially in New York City or Chicago. Yet, it's that slow, labored, and steady expansion that will make it easier to call these places home.

Each one, as it pops up near you, has a chance to be one of your favorite "locals," much like it's become for my wine ninja in Seattle. In time, maybe they'll be dull or insipid to the uber-winegeeks. But who wants to hang out with them anyway?

The rest of us? A laid-back place to try some cool wines we might not want to buy full bottles of at Whole Foods.

Date-night? You'll still hit the trendy terroiriste joint outside the village with sparkling mauzac by the jeroboam.

Quiet place to read a book or catch up on some tort reform?

That's exactly the niche where we have the need.

Previously: How To Face Down the Wine List and Win

Nilay Gandhi is the proprietor of the excellent wine blog 750 mL; he even gives personalized wine pairing advice on request.

Photo by re-ality from Flickr.

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