Steamed Up at High-Priced Coffee

Derrick Evans sits inside the new Starbucks in South Los Angeles wondering what the big deal is.

“It’s Starbucks,” he says with a shrug. Evans, 41, refuses to buy into the idea that the ‘hood has “arrived” just because it’s been corporatized by a national franchise--from Seattle, of all places.

“Overpriced, yuppie-[tail] coffee. That’s all it is,” says Evans, a senior account executive for a company that tracks down missing persons.

Needless to say, Evans was not among the hundreds of celebrants at Tuesday’s grand opening of the new shopping center at Western and Slauson, which includes the Starbucks, Home Depot, Food4Less and McDonald’s. He likes the idea of big-shot investors finally dropping a few dollars in a neighborhood they’ve shunned, but thinks local folks ought to have more pride than to go running into these franchises as if they’ve just been set free.

“McDonald’s is killing our children,” he says. “We got kids all big and fat from all that grease. Daddy goes through that drive-through and throws a ‘Happy Meal’ back to them. That ain’t right.”

Evans goes to Woody’s Bar-b-cue on Slauson for his beef. You don’t see a Woody’s in every neighborhood of every city in America, wearing itself out. You see it right here, that’s all. “Home-grown,” Evans says with pride.

Now, he gazes around a Starbucks that’s like every other, listening to that same jazz they play in all the stores, like they discovered the music. And now he takes in the doe-eyed images of part-owner Magic Johnson on the walls, and his resolve softens. It’s Magic. Magic can do no wrong.

“All right, I dig it,” Evans says. “It’s Magic’s, which adds a little something to it. But the average Joe from the ‘hood ain’t bringin’ his [self] in here. Three dollars for a cup of coffee?”

There’s a reason Magic is always smiling. Actually, I tell Evans, a regular cup of Joe is $1.40. “Yeah, but it’s Starbucks,” he says. “You come in here, you gotta stand in line, and you ain’t going to stand in that long line for no regular coffee. You’ll get yourself a Frappuccino or one of those. Kids are going to come in here before school and use all their money on a cup of coffee.”

Evans gets up to check out the price of pastries and whatnot. Clearly, he is aghast. A sad, small slab of peach cobbler in a plastic box is $3.45. One cookie is the price of a whole package of cookies down at Pic ‘n Save.

What the ‘hood is celebrating, Evans suggests, is the opportunity to be ripped off by outsiders.

“Look at that bottle of water for $1.69,” he says. “It’s 79 cents at the 7-Eleven.”

But price isn’t the worst of it. What really bothers Evans, as a working-class black man, is seeing his neighbors fall for the pitch, racing in here as if coffee never existed before Starbucks.

The place where it really gets to him is at the Starbucks in Ladera Heights.

“It’s filled with upper-class black folk who think they’re better than the rest of us,” Evans says. “Most of them are one paycheck away from losing the car or house, but that’s how black folk with a little something act. We only get along because we have to.”

Before I can consider the possibility of a conspiracy to divide the black community over coffee, two cops walk in, one white, one black. The white guy gets a regular coffee and the black guy says he’s drinking some decaf vanilla latte thing; he can’t even remember what’s in it. I ask why they come to such an expensive place, and the white cop says the coffee is better. “And,” he adds, “they give us a break.”

Beautiful. An LAPD discount. I can see heat rising in Evans’ eyes.

“Where’s my junior badge, so I can get a break too?” he asks.

“You want everything else that comes with it?” sneers the black cop. It’s kind of hard to come off as a tough guy, though, when you’re stirring a decaf vanilla cream puff, or whatever the heck he ordered.

Evans can barely wait for the cops to get out the door before he says, “Man, the black dude had some tutti-frutti drink. You hear that?”

The whole idea of our meeting, I remind Evans, was for him to be my official taster in a sampling of neighborhood brew. So I buy him a $1.40 cup of Starbucks, which he deems passable, nothing special, and then we walk across the street to 7-Star Donuts & Chinese Food.

“We have the same coffee; it has the same effect,” promises Vicky Rin. “Only 60 cents.”

While Vicky pours a cup, we learn that her family came over from Cambodia and built this business up from nothing. It’s a classic L.A. story, neighborhoods made and remade by a string of independent dreamers.

“We know all of our customers,” she says. “Not like some franchise.”

Evans takes his first sip just as Vicky’s mother, Linda, comes out.

“How do you like my coffee?” Linda asks.

“I think your coffee is great,” Evans says, handing her his half-full Starbucks cup. “Can you please dump this one for me?”

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Steve Lopez writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes. com.