Bill DeMarco Rates the Top 50 Starbucks in LA: This Week: #13

#13: the Starbucks at Main near Ocean Park—Venice

Venice! Home of muscles and sea smells. Where the streets are so narrow you have to double-park your tricycle. A guy once came up to me and said “Hey man do you have stigmata?!” and I said “No, I just walked down an alley in Venice.” We both laughed. But seriously Venice is the kind of place where you can get a tan, a turban, three t-shirts, and mugged. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .while getting a henna tattoo!!!

No, seriously, seriously this time, Venice is an eclectic community which has as much to offer the first time tourist as it does the city’s most jaded denizens. I was wandering through this place that sold paintings and posters. I come across this, like, large framed photo, it’s hard to describe, it was entitled “Mouse to Mouse Resucitation” and it was, I don’t know, I can’t even describe it. All I could think was, How did they get that life preserver on that mouse? And who has the patience? No wonder it was $49. (Memo to me: get into art) I sleuthed a little further and found this awesome oil painting which showed Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Malcolm X, and R2-D2 having coffee at a diner. It was called “Legends.” I didn’t buy it but it made me think. They probably waited for hours. And R2-D2 hadn’t touched his baked potato. Interesting.

Speaking of baked potatoes, don’t think I’m not going to talk about coffee. Because I’m not not. The Starbucks on Main near Ocean Park reminds me of one of those old Victorian framehouses. You know with the clapboard siding and little dormer windows. This store has neither but you can imagine some dessicated, unmarriageable aunt sitting up there with her needlework. Pining, sighing, withering. I think of her when I order a caramel macchiato. I hate these drinks but they made it really well. Thus a #13 rating.

I walk out onto Main street and fill my lungs with a brackish breeze. I can almost hear the digital tick of the parking meters. There’s a humdrum sound whispering something as if simultaneous with it being handed to me in a folded note: It ain’t that bad. It ain’t that bad. Maybe this jaded denizen and that dying spinster can throw each other a life preserver. Call it a little mouse to mouse.

DeMarco say peace.