Tuesday morning, I met Ian Cosh at the local café on St. Clair Ave. W. in Hillcrest Village that he’s spearheading an effort to save. The owners, regulars have been told, are planning to shut it down at the end of August. He says he and those he knows from sharing coffee and smiles there were “shocked.”

Describing the place’s characteristics, he says “it adds up to a really strong feeling of a certain kind of community — being in a place where I can sit and work on my writing.” (He’s a professional business and social enterprise research consultant, and a so-far amateur novelist.)

“And a commuter will come in and smile and wave at a baby in a stroller. Students come in on their lunch break” from the local high schools, he says. “Some of the regulars are differently abled,” he adds, describing cognitive disabilities. Then there’s a 12-year-old who comes in to read science fiction. There are stroller moms who come in mid-morning. “Everybody knows each other. They’re part of the community.”

It sounds like a good place to have in your neighbourhood. One you’d be distressed to lose. And it may be a familiar-seeming place to many Torontonians — because the place he and his neighbours are lobbying to save is a Starbucks.

“Save Our Starbucks” is the slogan on the handbills they’ve posted on local hydro poles, on the online petition that’s so far gathered more than 300 signatures, on the social media accounts Cosh is operating.

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In the world of grassroots café-inspired activism, this represents something of a generational tide-turning. Some of us will be old enough to remember when residents of the Annex ran a high-profile (and, for a short time, successful) campaign to keep Starbucks out of their neighbourhood, in favour of trying to save local institution Dooney’s. Some of us will remember when the Seattle-based coffee chain was a resented sign of gentrification — famously inspiring graffiti on its West Queen West location reading, “Drake you ho this is all your fault.” A decade ago, just the rumour of a possible Starbucks opening in Kensington Market was enough to make people militant and fearful.

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But just as in Terminator 2, Sarah Connor reluctantly but emphatically came around to the idea that the menacing robot monster she’d spent the first film running away from was now the one she’d depend on for support, it seems at least some activists now see Starbucks as the local community asset they need to rally behind.

Before, the company was seen as a bad guy for opening stores. Suddenly it’s a bad guy for closing them.

Cosh, an anthropology PhD with a union background, sees the irony. He never saw himself as a Starbucks guy until he found this location a comfortable place to work and hang out in. He says he realizes this isn’t the most pressing issue in the world, and one that’s easy to roll your eyes or poke fun at. But he and his neighbours aren’t joking, either.

Even though it’s just a Starbucks that appears like many others — a nice enough location, but kind of generic. “The very generic-ness of it is part of what makes it a gathering place,” Cosh says. There are other places on St. Clair nearby — trendy hipster coffee-snob places, traditional Italian espresso joints, little independent lunch boutiques. But those places, Cosh says, seem a little niche. They draw a certain kind of customer — each of them — and project a certain kind of vibe. It’s the very corporate, mid-market neutrality of this Starbucks’s identity that draws in an unlikely cross-section of the local population and has allowed them to become friendly in a low-pressure, comfortable environment.

“When I’m there, I feel no pressure to be a certain kind of person,” Cosh says, contrasting it with a cooler place nearby. “I breathe better.”

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A request I sent to Starbucks for a response — all such requests go through the U.S. head office — was answered with a statement that appears to be a boilerplate form letter.

“Thanks for reaching out. We continue to experience high growth in Canada and are proud of our success. As a normal part of doing business, every year we open many new stores, we close some, and relocate a few others. We consider many factors when we make these decisions. When we decide to close a store, we go to great lengths to minimize negative impacts: we offer affected store partners roles at other stores, we communicate to customers and community neighbours in advance and advise them how we will continue to support them moving forward.”

It’s a sentiment less in line with the local particular community vibe Cosh and his friends claim to feel on St. Clair, and more the faceless, generic corporate blah blah blah you’d expect from a giant chain. Which maybe is what you’d expect. I mean, it’s Starbucks.

Even if some customers felt they found something more there, in this one, for a while. In their petition, Cosh and his group point out that the Starbucks mission statement claims to want to be a place where “we can gather, as a community, to share great coffee and deepen human connection.” Speaking to me on the sidewalk outside, Cosh says, “This is at least one place where they really are fulfilling their mission statement.”

For now, at least.

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