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on Pier 55, in the shadow of the crumbling Alaskan Way Viaduct. When the barista called my name and plunked my order on the counter, the only thing distinguishing it from drinks that don’t have their own official Twitter handles is that scrawl of “PSL” in black Sharpie on the side of the cup. (The company trademarked the acronym in 2013.) A strong, sweet aroma wafted out of the tiny hole in the lid.
    The formula hasn’t changed since those first days in the lab (“We’dhave a revolt,” says Dukes of the PSL fan base). The version that emerged from those clandestine meetings bears more resemblance to a liquefied glazed doughnut than a piece of pumpkin pie. One flavor that’s conspicuously absent is the sharp rap of espresso. It’s in there, though, just lurking beneath the sweetness. Perhaps even more conspicuous: the lack of any discernible pumpkin. There is pumpkin in the formula. Or, more precisely, pumpkin flavor. But the spices assert themselves utterly over the more delicate gourd. If this were a piece of art, the pumpkin would be formed by negative space.
    While chalkboard art in Starbucks stores focuses on the pumpkins, those spices—along with that age-old trick of making something a limited-time commodity (cough, McDonald’s Shamrock Shake)—are key to the mania. At least that’s the theory posited by Carolyn Ross, an associate professor at the school of food science at Washington State University. “People agree it smells nice across cultures,” she says of the nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove blend. “I once had a pumpkin spice latte not from Starbucks that was pumpkin-heavy, and it was awful.”
    But what really fuels the PSL craze? Adroit marketing and social media. Each year brings an increasingly elaborate rollout plan, involving hashtags and secret codes that “unlock” the PSL at a particular store and Facebook contests where fans vie to have the latte land in their city a week earlier than the national debut. To follow #PSL on Twitter or Instagram this time of year is to be flooded with images of those Starbucks cups, brandished, hoisted, or artfully arranged to showcase that familiar acronym scrawled on the side in black. And then, of course, there are the commercials: the one with the overzealous PSL fan air-drumming with a pair of green venti straws; or the series featuring a fully staged—and completely fake—Pumpkin Spice Days festival in a small, bucolic town, complete with cinnamon-stick-twirling contests and a Miss Pumpkin Spice pageant.
    Peter Dukes the man long ago moved on to new projects within the company. But Peter Dukes the homage is 60 miles north of Starbucks HQ, in Skagit County. Just off Route 20, in the old downtown strip of Burlington, population 8,400, dwells a five-foot-tall illustration of Dukes, a deliberately rustic rendering of the sort of portrait that might gaze out from the pages of a high school history textbook.
    This oddball tribute is left over from the most recent round of Pumpkin Spice Days commercials, filmed in the area in 2013 for the drink’s 10th anniversary campaign. But the staffers at a nearby Starbucks, three miles north, were puzzled when I asked where it was. “I should know,” confessed the motherly woman who took my order. “My daughter was in that commercial.” The kindly ladies at the town visitor’s center, however, received my query as if it were a totally normal one, spun me around, and pointed me toward the sidewall of the DeCamp and Stradford furniture store directly across the street.
    Dukes is depicted from the shoulders up, wearing a blue polo shirt. His name is emblazoned on a white banner splayed across his chest. It’s an exaggerated likeness; the real Dukes looks distinguished and slightly outdoorsy. Here the artist gave him a less-than-flattering overbite and sort of a Dumb and Dumber –meets–business casual haircut. “They