E-Mail This Article to a Friend ANNALS OF FREE TRADE Reverend Billy descends on Starbucks BY CAMILLE DODERO

"Transnational capital is vortexing all around us!" wailed Reverend Billy at the Old South Meeting House this past Sunday night, referring to the Borders Books, McDonald’s, Barnes & Noble, Wendy’s, and H&M down the block. As the chief minister of the Church of Stop Shopping, the bleached-blond reverend is particularly sensitive to chains, especially those flanking the historic site where the Sons of Liberty once got fired up before dumping teabags in the Boston Harbor. He had come there with the 25-piece Stop Shopping Gospel Choir to perform Who Will Survive the Shopocalypse?

Reverend Billy is the anti-consumerist persona of Brooklyn resident Bill Talen, a fiftysomething performance artist/activist/actor/agitator whose anti-corporate-missionary alter ego is best known for proselytizing against Wal-Mart, the Disney Store, and Starbucks. Talen has particular ire for Starbucks, two of which are within sight, because he believes the Seattle-based gourmet-coffee chain appropriated the "rebellious atmosphere" of 1950s- and ’60s-era coffeehouses. And so he shows up regularly at Starbucks, in priestly garb, to execute Lord-summoning cash-register exorcisms that have not only gotten him arrested "between 30 and 50 times," but caused Starbucks to file an injunction prohibiting him from coming within 750 feet of a retail location in California. Last November, he also spent three days in a Los Angeles jail for disrupting the flow of commerce.

The Rev came to Boston this past weekend, where he planned to hit at least one Starbucks during his visit. But since he didn’t want to get arrested and miss his Sunday-evening show, there would be no sermons at the front counter, nothing that would land him in the back of a police car. Instead, choir volunteers would perform semi-disruptive skits inside the Starbucks, while Talen meandered around the store in a brown trench coat, hair tucked under a wide-brimmed hat. And so, at 5:20 p.m. this past Sunday, 15 or so choir members dug into trash to find discarded Starbucks cups to use as props, quietly filed into the School Street location, and plopped down at different tables.

In the back of the café, two of Talen’s actresses fell into a skit called "Sponsored Love," which had them loudly professing their undying love — "sponsored by Coca-Cola." But since they were at the back of the store, it was difficult to hear what was happening. Eventually, one ran out onto the street, open-mouthed kissing another choir member.

Behind the counter, three baristas watched confusedly.

Then it was Monica Hunken’s turn. A cute blond soprano, she was seated right in front of the register. So when she started arguing with another actress about who loves Starbucks more, the scene quickly became the focal point.

Meanwhile, Talen mingled with the actual customers. "What’s going on?" he asked an unsuspecting woman trying to secure a seat amid the chaos. She shrugged. "She loves Starbucks more than her friend, whereas her friend only has a passing interest?" He’d clearly seen the script. "Is that what’s happening?"

The woman lit up like she’d been handed front-row tickets to a boxing match. "Yeah! I think so."

By now, Hunken was shouting. "This is me!" she hollered, pointing at the green Starbucks icon on her paper cup. "I am the Starbucks mermaid! But she doesn’t have any nipples!" She inspected the logo. "What happened to her nipples? They stole her nipples!"

Nipple talk is where the baristas finally drew the line. Two aproned clerks bolted out from behind the espresso brownies and peanut-butter stacks, waving their arms like airplane controllers. "We have just called the cops," said one. "Please, they are coming, so you better leave."

"Get Billy out of here," whispered Savitri Durkee, Talen’s wife and Church of Stop Shopping director, who’d been perusing a pile of employment applications on a table. Talen quietly slipped out the side door.

"You can’t muzzle the Starbucks mermaid!" yelled Hunken. Her passing-interest-in-Starbucks companion forcibly escorted her out. And with that, the action was over.

As the crew crossed the Freedom Trail back to the Old South Meeting House, Richard Sandler, director of The Gods of Times Square (1999), who had just shot the whole incident, sighed. "That was so Boston," he scoffed. "This is such a yuppie town." Asked to elaborate, he smirked, "The staff was so polite. They waited and waited, just hoping that it’d go away. In New York, the Starbucks employees are way onto Reverend Billy — the cops come in seconds." Apparently so: a few years ago, Starbucks circulated a cautionary memo to its New York employees, titled "What Should I Do if Reverend Billy Is in My Store?", a heading Talen later appropriated as the title of his book.

Obviously, that memo never made it to Boston.