Who Put the Vices in the Spices?

Vices & Spices, the First Coffee Shop in Santa Barbara, Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years

Henry Wildenborg (left) and Blue Booth | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

As it hits the 50-year mark this Saturday, Vices & Spices can claim clear and undisputed bragging rights to being the oldest coffee shop in Santa Barbara. In all likelihood, it’s also the first — at least the first to install one of those shiny, Italian, industrial-strength espresso machines that have since become so ubiquitous.

But back when store owners Blue Booth and Henry Wildenborg first opened the doors of Vices & Spices on State Street by Ontare Road, their economic survival — short-term and long-term — was anything but certain.

Booth and Wildenborg both remember their very first customer: Today, he’s a highly respected — if sometimes outspoken — fixture in Santa Barbara’s ever-swirling real estate universe. Back then, he was a hell-raiser. They don’t remember exactly what kind of beans he bought. But they definitely remember him coming back two hours later.

“Your coffee is shit,” he declared.

Ouch.

At the time, Booth had just turned 21; Wildenborg was 26. With a throwdown like that, anything might have happened. Booth responded by calmly asking the irate customer where he could find better beans. It turns out that the customer knew the original owner of what has since become Peet’s coffee-shop empire. Back then, however, Alfred Peet was still running a small coffee shop in Berkeley. Booth called Peet and explained the situation; Peet gave Booth the name of his supplier in San Francisco.

The rest, as they say, is history.

But so too is 50 years of friendship. And 50 years of running a quiet, unassuming business that’s survived the test of time. All that history has to have a starting point. With Booth and Wildenborg, their origin story is rooted in one of those happenstance encounters that only in hindsight bear the whiff of destiny.

Wildenborg was in Cottage Hospital at the time, dealing with some serious back surgery that laid him out for weeks. Booth would be his hospital roommate for just one night.

Booth — in and out of Santa Barbara since first moving here with his family in 7th grade — was then a recent Santa Barbara High graduate. Wildenborg was a recent transplant from Minneapolis. He’d moved to Santa Barbara to be with a girlfriend he’d met in Indiana who, in turn, had just moved here. These two guys didn’t know each other.

But magically — in that shared space and time — some marijuana appeared. So did a pipe. Amazingly, the floor nurse was in on it, too, standing sentry in front of the door lest someone ruin the party.

This was the 1970s.

Pot was still dangerous. But deliciously subversive. Booth would be released the following day. He would come back later that afternoon with his mother — a waitress at Harry’s — and his girlfriend, armed with some freshly baked brownies. By then, Wildenborg had a new roommate, a deputy with the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office.

Out of this beginning, a lasting friendship and business partnership would spring. Booth would be the best man when Wildenborg got married. Just a few years after opening the coffee shop, the two would take off for a year-long trip around the world. Booth’s mother quit her job at Harry’s to watch over the store.

It was still the ’70s.

Every day of their journey, the two woke up with no set plan. But every day, countless decisions had to be made. And on the fly. The interpersonal navigation skills honed throughout those 365 days no doubt enabled Booth and Wildenborg to shift and flow around any of the inevitable tribulations of running a small business.

In the beginning, the shop drew a decidedly countercultural demographic. Today, that demographic bulge is still calling Vice & Spices home, hanging out in the back patio, holding court, catching up, and hanging out. Now — as then — it’s a true neighborhood destination.

In the beginning, it wasn’t necessarily easy. To make ends meet, Booth worked next door at High Times Liquor Store. Wildenborg worked the front desk at a nearby motel. Over the years, the two would take on new roles and business relationships.

Always, they remained friends.

Over the years, Vices & Spices would retain its essential spirit, still a snug, cozy, hippie-infused gathering place, where people might stumble onto old friends, mingle, and, of course, drink coffee.

Back in the day, it was a hotbed of newspaper reading, too. In fact, when the Santa Barbara News-Press was in full flower of its now-infamous meltdown, Vices & Spices was where the newsroom insurrectionists hatched plans for resisting owner Wendy P. McCaw.

For a while, the store sold all the herbal remedies one would expect of a 1970s apothecary. It still sells some of the best hot cinnamon gummies on the planet. And, of course, coffee — dozens and dozens of varietals, some even grown by Booth himself. Their names are musical and mysterious, asking questions that can only be answered with a taste: Tanzania Peaberry, Costa Rican Tarrazu, and Jamaican Blue Mountain, to name just a few.

Everything was — and remains — displayed in open containers. Nothing was — or is — pre-packaged and mummified by its cellophane wrapping. And
unlike Dune, Dart, Handlebar and, of course, Starbucks, Vices & Spices has stayed afloat not so much by selling all the myriad of coffee drinks–which it does–but by selling coffee by the pound, tea by the ounce, and jewelry by who knows what.

If you don’t know what kind of coffee to buy, one of the two clerks always behind the counter — there have been more than 200 over the years — will pull out a large plastic storage tub, lift the lid, and allow customers to sniff in the rich aromas. They keep tabs on how many pounds of coffee any customer purchases, enrolling them in the Vice & Spices Coffee Club. After buying 10 pounds, the 11th pound is free.

Sales of pounds are tracked by writing down transactions on Rolodex cards manually extracted from — and then later reinserted into — an old-school Rolodex spindle. The Rolodex is so vintage that new cards can only be ordered on eBay. “They never crash,” Booth said with a grin and a shrug.

Compared to Trader Joe’s and places like that, the coffee’s not cheap. Booth and Wildenborg make no bones about it. “There’s always room at the top,” said Booth. “Buy the best there is.”

To celebrate life, friendship, and 50 years of community — not to mention coffee, tea, candy, spices, history, jewelry, and perhaps above all, survival — Booth and Wildenborg are hosting a thank-you party at the store this coming Saturday, June 7. Live music will be provided.

Vices & Spices (3558 State St.; [805] 687-7196; vicesandspices.net) is celebrating 50 years in business with free cake and coffee on Saturday, June 7, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.