Would you like fries with your focaccia sandwich and your latte? McDonald's introduces the McCafe -- a "faux-hipster espresso bar, complete with comfy chairs and Frank Sinatra on the sound system," according to the SF Chronicle. I visited a McCafe in Sydney, and to me it's no worse than Starbucks, if a little weird because the iconic logo still crops up and you're sort of looking around for a big plastic clown. Call me a middlebrow suburbanite at heart (OK, wait...don't), but I think we could do a lot worse as a culture than having admittedly ersatz cafe culture cropping up at the mini-mall -- how easily people forget the alternatives.