The world will little notice — and care even less — when Santa Barbara loses one star out of its milky way of coffee houses next week. But I will. As of May 18, the Peet’s caffeine dispensary on the 1100 block of State Street — right across from the art museum — will shut its doors, the victim of already sky-high rents having just gotten that much higher. For me, Peet’s departure qualifies as yet another nail in the coffin holding the festering corpse that State Street has become.
Maybe I’m getting a little melodramatic here. But I don’t think so.
Coffee, like beauty, lies in the taste buds of the beholder. For my money, Peet’s sold the best bean at the best price with the least amount of waxed-mustachioed millenialista self-satisfaction in town. At Peet’s, none of the baristas ever sniffed the cup of coffee they served me. That has happened elsewhere. More to the point, there was a palpable kindness to the people behind the counter at Peet’s that was greatly appreciated by anyone needing a port in their storm or an island in their stream. I was one. It offered a home away for home for countless scribblers, poets, songwriters, insomniacs, programmers, visitors, artists, journalists, county bureaucrats, politicians, musicians, and others unified by a love of coffee. It was what the hipster sociologists now term “an intersection point of accidental community.” The courtyard behind Peet’s is one of Santa Barbara’s truly great unsung spaces, squandered it seems by everyone on the planet but me. I can’t tell you how many interviews — on and off the record — I had there. Any excuse to be there was an excuse well taken.