You know things are getting bad when Starbucks flees your city like rats from a sinking ship.

They’ll put a store anywhere.

Well, anywhere except for here apparently.

The Starbucks index is pointing down in Las Vegas.

Starbucks Corp., the coffee-shop chain stung by a slowdown in sales as strapped consumers shy away from $4 lattes, is staging the biggest retreat in its 37-year history, closing 600 of 11,168 U.S. company-owned and licensed stores. Las Vegas is taking the biggest hit, losing 16 of the once-trendy cafes, or 10 per cent of its total. Los Angeles will lose two of about 56, New York City, 10 of more than 200, and Seattle — the company’s hometown — seven of 140.

The Nevada city’s gambling-driven growth in the 1990s proved irresistible to Starbucks, which has about 155 outlets there today, according to the store locator on the company’s website. The surge and contraction at Starbucks mirror the Las Vegas economy, said Keith Schwer, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.

“We’ve gone from having a better unemployment situation than the national economy to one that is slightly less,” Schwer said.

Okay, so only ten percent of the stores are closing, but who ever heard of a Starbucks store CLOSING?

I thought they only opened those things.

Those indiscriminate bastards even opened a store in Henderson.

Like I said, they will open a store anywhere.

They usually open them up next to each other in case an employee in one of the stores calls in sick, or the coffee machine breaks down or something.

At that point, they just say “Go to the Starbucks next door.”

That stuff is like liquid crack. People will kill their own mother and pawn her gold teeth in order to procure whatever they put in those drinks.

If someone has five bucks left, and the decision is between a Starbucks coffee or a gallon of gas … their ass is walking home in 110 degree weather while sipping a double venti tall grande fuckacinno.

Forget about the housing market, the visitor numbers, the gambling revenue, and all the other indicators that attempt to predict our local economy.

Nothing says “we’re screwed” more than losing Starbucks franchises.