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This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
The Coffee Buzz
It looks like it belongs on the island of Maui. It's green and lush and beautiful. Yet it's strictly for the game programmers of Activision, the weight-lifters of 24 Hour Fitness and a variety of business park-ers who spend their 9 to 5 here...
Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf #10
3150 Ocean Park Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90403
Hours: Monday - Saturday 6:00 AM - 8:00 PM
Sunday 7:00 AM - 8:00 PM
Down on Ocean Park Boulevard, a few blocks West of Bundy Boulevard is the establishment that might as well be dubbed the business park coffee haunt, having been set in and around the Ocean Park business park. Surrounded there by Activision, 24 Hour Fitness, a Coco's and an El Torito - without the weekday business going on, this Coffee Bean is often extremely dead.
But one dead coffee shop reeks of opportunities for others, as a visitor to this location can get away with murder where murder is bringing your pet inside, bringing your own bagged lunch and magazines and sitting out on the Ocean Park adjacent patio without ordering a thing, and getting (gasp!) two punches on your pink-Coffee Bean card when you've only bought one. But even worse than being dubbed the business park coffee haunt is being called the cheap-ass twenty minute free validated parking on weekends coffee haunt which penalizes its weekend-visitors by only giving them twenty free minutes of coffee time.
Weekdays are, obviously, another story -- where you are given at least an hour of time to drink and think on the business park's dollar. But come the weekend, there's no love for the coffee connoisseur, who gets charged for every second spent relaxing and reclining.
Parking Attendant: Three-fifty, please.
Sponsored message
Anonymous Weekend Coffee Drinker: I was here twenty-five minutes. I got validated!
Parking Attendant: Three-fifty for the first hour after twenty minutes.
Anonymous Weekend Coffee Drinker: I don't know if I even have that much money on me.
Parking Attendant: ...?
Anonymous Weekend Coffee Drinker: Ok, I do. But I'm not liking this at all.
Parking Attendant: ...?
Anonymous Weekend Coffee Drinker: Here you go, but this sucks.
Sponsored message
Parking Attendant: ...
Anonymous Weekend Coffee Drinker: Curse you, Coffee Bean at Ocean Avenue!!
In the end, although LAist had had no personal interactions with the parking attendants or management at this location our unbiased opinion is that, indeed, unless you are one of those quickie coffee drinkers, this is not the place to relax, converse or ruminate.
That is, unless you can do it in under twenty minutes.
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Right now, LAist has lost $1.7M in annual funding due to Congress clawing back money already approved. The support we receive before year-end will determine how fully our newsroom can continue informing, serving, and strengthening Southern California.
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