Focusing on boycotts of Starbucks over last decade, this article looks more broadly at the current states of buying and civic engagement in the United States and abroad. Contrary to what Robert Putnam argues, at least in part, in his now classic text, Bowling Alone, this article suggests that, as formal electoral politics have lost their hold on many, citizens have not abandoned trying to change things or making their voices heard. Instead, they have increasingly expressed their ideas about everything from local affairs to foreign relations at the point of purchase — through in this case, not buying a widely recognized product to gain a say in the larger distribution of social power. ‘Open brands,’ ones that are sensitive to consumer desires, have, in turn, responded, producing a kind of ‘rough democracy of buying’ by offering political solutions to win or retain customers. In the end, however, the evidence suggests that while pursuing political power through (not) buying makes sense and reflects broader changes in the neoliberal world, this strategy of engagement, nonetheless, had severe limits. The stories of Starbucks boycotts show that consumer actions are easily co-opted by the marketing prowess and deft moves of multi-national brands and by the notion held by some consumers that (not) buying is enough as a study of these boycotts also points to a new way of seeing buying not so much as politics themselves but a stage in the process of politicalization.

An efficient scalable route to synthesize the enantiomerically pure tert-butyl-(1R,4S,6R)-4-(hydroxymethyl)-3-azabicyclo[4.1.0]heptane-3-carboxylate is described. Compared to the original routes, significant improvements were made by using an innovative approach starting from commercially available chiral lactone. In this approach, one of the key steps described is an elegant epimerization/hydrolysis of the undesired diastereoisomer avoiding tedious purification. The chemistry has been scaled up to produce kilogram amounts of tert-butyl-(1R,4S,6R)-4-(hydroxymethyl)-3azabicyclo[4.1.0]heptane-3-carboxylate in 43% yield over nine chemical transformations.

Starbucks has always been a global company, really a global presence with a global sense of itself. Opened in Seattle in 1971, Starbucks seemed, and felt, at first more local than global. In its early years, it sold whole‐bean, freshly roasted coffee out of one store with the owners often standing behind the counter in aprons. Even when the company opened a second, and then a third store, it still seemed like a small mom and pop kind of place. But as much as Starbucks looked and acted local, it was already enmeshed in the global. All the beans it sold came from some place else, places like Sumatra or Ethiopia or Guatemala located on the economic fringes of the developed world. Indeed it was this physical, cultural, and economic distance that enhanced what Starbucks sold – the reworking of an ordinary everyday commodity – coffee – into a slightly exotic, affordable luxury from a far‐off place – a grande latte.

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