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The Brooklyn Papers / Julie Rosenberg

The Starbucks on Smith Street, opening soon.

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That Starbucks on the corner of Smith and Wyckoff streets is expected to open on Feb. 16 — apparently with nary an outcry.

Perhaps Brooklyn has changed or perhaps it has simply become more addicted to caffeine, but so far, the incursion of the Seattle-based espresso megalith has caused none of the existential angst that accompanied prior openings on nearby Court Street in Cobble Hill, and on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. This time, people are matter-of-fact.

“Once there are enough white people with laptops in a neighborhood, you know a Starbucks is next,” said Chrystal Smith, sipping a glass of wine at Boat across the street.

Smith said she doesn’t go to the omnipresent chain — “as a rule” — but she knows plenty of “conscious people” who do.

“It will do well here,” she said.

Apparently, the latte slinger thinks so, too. Its new location will seat 25 — and project manager Juan Vega told The Stoop that the company hopes to put tables out front.

As he said that, he sipped a coffee from, of all places, the Dunkin Donuts a block away.

There is already a Starbucks three blocks away from the new location, which replaces M and M Discount.

Building owner Mike Affronti, who also owns Los Paisanos, a mom-and-pop meat market and deli next door, said many restaurants wanted to rent the space. But he ended up choosing Starbucks because it would “keep the action around and bring new people in.”

Starbucks has been scouting locations on Brooklyn’s restaurant row for two years, according to neighborhood know-it-all Henry “Lord” Byron, who owns the Fall Café, a bastion of organic, shade-grown java near Union Street.

To Byron, the encroachment of pumpkin spice latte onto his territory is a death struggle.

“The rest of us will be killed,” said Byron, “because Starbucks’ plan is to saturate every neighborhood until its coffee shop is the last one standing.”

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

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