Opinion: Starbucks and Jean Paul

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In a Laguna Beach shopping center, a short distance from the usual tourist haunts, Jean Paul’s Goodies exerts its peculiar charm on a corps of dedicated customers. Peculiar because baker and counterman Jean Paul, as crusty as his bread, delivers all the smiling service of the stereotypical French proprietor. A faded sign announces that unattended children will receive an espresso and a free puppy. There are no wood veneers here, no forest-green counters, no subtle lighting. Jean Paul’s has frankly linoleum floors, wire racks to hold the ‘goodies,’ and a line of customers waiting for his strong coffee (served in one-size, environmentally unacceptable Styrofoam cups) and his fabulous croissants.

And even if those weren’t so fabulous, many of those folks would be here anyway, as a matter of principle, because the alternative is a Starbucks 50 feet in one direction, and another Starbucks in the supermarket 50 feet in another direction. It is said that anyone who shows up at Jean Paul’s with a Starbucks cup is immediately ordered to leave.

Laguna Beach has long had a testy relationship with chain stores. There were screams of outrage when Subway announced plans to move in (it succeeded) and more when Long’s Drugs looked into taking over a long-empty spot on Broadway (it stayed out). As a result, the town is largely lined with tchotchke stores for tourists, rather than the sorts of places you might actually buy your child shoes, for example. So you can imagine the unhappiness when the lone but popular Starbucks across from Main Beach sprouted a sibling just a block and a half away, and somehow grew to five locations within the city. The ubiquitous-Starbucks joke that was so funny in the movie ‘Best in Show’ suddenly loomed as a threat.

There used to be another chain coffeehouse, this one only semi-ubiquitous, in one of the Starbucks locations near Jean Paul’s, but it packed up and left. Lagunans pat themselves on the back, sure it was their staunch support against the evils of chainery that caused the closure. For whatever it means, this morning there was one lone customer leaving the Starbucks that replaced the other chain store, while Jean Paul’s had the usual line of regulars.

Now that Starbucks has announced plans to shutter 600 stores, there is a certain amount of fervent hope in Laguna that this latest store near Jean Paul’s is among those marked for closure--a victory for the discriminatory consumer.

Wonder how many neighborhoods are wishing, despite the loss of 12,000 jobs chainwide, for the loss of a Starbucks — or fearing it?