We can't have that

From today's Palm Beach Post-

PALM BEACH — One thing you can buy in Boca Raton that you can't buy in Palm Beach: a Venti nonfat decaf pumpkin latte extra foam.

Boca has 11 Starbucks stores, home of the $4 white chocolate mocha espresso. Palm Beach has zip.

Some islanders like it that way.

The closest of Palm Beach County's 37 Starbucks to the island are on Clematis Street and in CityPlace. Where to get that frappuccino fix when the bridges are up?

Enter Murray Goodman, Worth Avenue landowner, who happens to have a vacancy in his Esplanade — recently renamed 150 Worth — an enclosed shopping center often called a mall in other locales. Starbucks could open a cozy 25-seat store across the via from Louis Vuitton, where the Purple Turtle used to be.

The town council approved the site plan for Starbucks in August by a 3-2 vote but left undone a vote on a Starbucks-Goodman request to eliminate the five additional parking spaces required.

That led to a resident uprising against the possibility of the island's first fast-food franchise and a demand that Councilwoman Susan Markin not be allowed to vote on the Starbucks question in October because she openly encouraged the opposition.

Town hall inboxes and mailboxes filled with more than three dozen e-mails and letters from residents, most opposed to the Seattle coffee giant's move to town.

It isn't the coffee so much as what comes with it, many wrote.

"T-shirted coffee-drinkers, slopping down the Avenue, dropping their paper cups who-knows-where," resident Peter Reed wrote.

Starbucks' free Wi-Fi hot spots for Internet connections will make it worse, said Henry McIntosh, leader of the newly formed CUSP: Citizens United for Sensible Planning.

"It's not a matter of someone dashing in to pick up a cup of overpriced mediocre coffee and dashing back out to their double-parked car," he wrote. "These folks hang around for hours, and you will positively love their dress code and personal grooming. Some of the body piercings are quite imaginative."

What's next, Nike? wrote Jere Zenko. "How about a Disney store?"

Heavens to Betsy, Disney or Starbucks in Palm Beach may signal the start of the apocalypse. On the other hand a closer store may have prevented a young boy from drowning a few years ago. The mother left the two-year-old boy home alone as she left the island to go buy a gift.

We have to protect people from their own acts of stupidity. That includes people in Palm Beach! Starbucks or Bust I say.

Linked to- Jo's Cafe, Bright & Early,