@homeChicago Review 8/19/03
By Gail O'Connor

In the central hub of Wicker Park, at the three-way intersection of Damen, Milwaukee and North Avenues, coffee lovers can surely find their perfect cup of joe.

Whether it’s Filter, the alternative café in the Flat Iron building, Starbucks, the corporate coffee shop or the quirky Half & Half quick coffee stop under the el tracks; there are plenty of lattes, frappes and traditional coffee blends to make their way around these famous six-corners.

Starbucks, which opened at its Milwaukee Ave. location in January 2001, has been around the longest of the three shops. Filter and Half & Half are relative newcomers to the neighborhood, having arrived within the past year. But the owners and management at each store feel confident that there is a large enough “coffee market” in the neighborhood to support these three stores and others in the neighborhood.

“The charm and personality of the neighborhood is independent businesses,” said Jessy Keete, the daytime store manager of Filter.

Starbucks sabotage
That may explain why two years ago, when Starbucks opened, there was backlash from some neighborhood residents. Keete recalls that Starbucks employees would arrive at the store in the morning only to find small coins jammed into the door locks, making it difficult to open the doors without the help of a locksmith.

But things have settled down since then, said Starbucks manager Stephen Pearlman. According to Pearlman, “Starbucks is warmly received now.”

Pearlman said the wide range of people living in Wicker Park is reflected in the variety of its stores.

That diversity allows each coffee shop to find its own niche, inside a large enough area whose customers have different tastes.

Location, location, location
Debbie Sharpe, owner of Half & Half, said that there are lots of new residential pockets in Wicker Park and around the tri-intersection center of the neighborhood, allowing for the coffee shops to coexist.

“I’m right next to the Blue Line,” Sharpe said, “so I couldn’t be better located unless I was right on the tracks.”

Sharpe’s Half & Half has limited seating inside and a few canopied tables outside of the store. Her business is more of a quick stop as opposed to somewhere that you can relax for hours over your coffee or the small foods she serves. The Wicker Park Starbucks, similarly, provides almost exclusively take-out service, with only a small bench along one window to sit.

On the other hand, Filter provides a large seating area and wireless internet connections for its customers. The coffee shop can be a second office to local students and lawyers, who bring their laptops with them and work in a relaxed environment.

Another hot topic abuzz on the local coffee scene is where each shop’s beans are roasted, specifically whether or not the shops use local roasters. Filter beans are roasted locally specifically for the store, Half & Half serves Intelligentsia beans roasted in Chicago and Starbucks uses beans roasted at several locations around the globe.