Out of the Blue: Irascible Jean Paul: one heck of a guy

His coffee is fantastically mediocre. Big industrial heaps of Gevalia, from that land renowned for coffee, Sweden.

His lattes are always tall, with long shots of espresso and a single dollop of steamed milk: no foam or schiuma, as the Italians call it.

Want soy milk? Think again! Macchiato? Get out!

It’s served one way — strong, in generic brown paper cups, with no corrugated overlay to keep your dainty hands from blistering.

Want an array of the latest natural sweeteners? Yeah, right. And never, ever use a sentence with “frap” and “chino” in it.

Window lettering from another century. Cracked and worn linoleum floors you wouldn’t let your dog lick. Fogged-up refrigerator cases filled with cheeses and graying patés.

His croissants are chewy, yet he sells them by the bushel. He says they are baked on the premises but I’ve never seen any proof of that.

No wifi. No soft surfaces or palettes that invite you to stick around, save for a few outdoor tables and chairs. And he disdains credit cards.

Just a single purveyor with the disposition of a pit bull.

Jean Paul’s Goodies at Boat Canyon isn’t much to look at, but for 31 years it has served as the beacon and connective tissue for the people of north Laguna. There simply was no other place to gather in the morning. And gather they do, like a sewing circle.

This is where stories get told and deals get done. One woman I know came to town with nothing but her young daughter, a Mac and some graphic-design skills. She managed a great living and was endlessly booked simply by hanging at JP’s.

He is an equal opportunity offender. It doesn’t matter if you are rich, famous or beautiful. OK, maybe beautiful. He’ll make a special effort to insult you.

Yet there they are. An everyday stream of the faithful lined up for not an ounce of small talk or “have a nice day.” And there he is, day in and day out, in his Technicolor assortment of Lacoste shirts (what, you think he’d wear American?).

He approaches the counter barely making eye contact, and then utters that single, foreboding word:

“Yes?”

From there you better be ready to say exactly what you want in as few words as possible. Get it right the first time, get out relatively unscathed. Fumble your order, pause too long over the selections, request something outside the parameters of what he considers coffee, and you are in for an epic beatdown.

The regulars lay in wait for such carnage, the retellings radiating across town. “Did you hear what Jean Paul did this time?”

For many years my business was located across the street, and the initiation for new employees was to send them unsuspectingly into JP’s with an order that included coffees with rice milk, latte macchiatos and triple-iced soy cappuccinos. The pallor in their faces when they returned was always epic. If they could deal with that, they could handle our job.

You’d think a guy like this would have been drummed out of town by this often saccharine, PC village where people only speak nasty behind your back. Yet for all his bluster, the twinkle in his eyes sometimes shows through, especially when you make him laugh. And for an instant you can see the humanity, the humor and the possibility that, just maybe, it is all an act.

After all, how could anyone who served the public so faithfully day in and day out for 31 years not really like people? He has outlasted former City Manager Ken Frank, for God’s sake. He crushed bigger competitors with fancy arabica beans like Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

Why did he succeed? For one thing, he offers the only public commons in north Laguna, proving once again that you can serve bathwater and be successful if you provide a place for humans to collide and connect. He also has parking.

More poignantly, in this world of pre-fab, generic chain stores, where young staff come and go without making a meaningful connection to community, yet shower customers with insincerity, Jean Paul offers something missing in our retail experience: authenticity. He put in his 10,000 hours without fanfare and was always, always there.

There is not an ounce of pretense or promotion. What you see is assuredly what you get, even when it is well past its expiration. He may be taciturn and surly, he may be the inspiration for Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi, but he is ours, and he is an icon in this town. And there is comfort in that.

This Saturday I arrived at 10 a.m. to meet some folks for a bike ride, and there was a line out the door. Seems every road and mountain biker in town was there to fuel up. We sure looked like a biking town, unsafe as we are.

And as busy as it was, this would be one of the last Saturdays left in his storied career. That’s right, this fixture of north Laguna is calling it quits Aug. 9, and Clay Berryhill has bought his iconic sign, which will be removed in a ceremony that day.

You’d think that maybe Jean Paul would want some sort of recognition and praise for his three decades of service. He’s an interesting fellow with a lot of stories — about going to an elite school in Paris with Maria Shriver, emigrating to America at 21 and becoming a negotiator for the U.S. government in South America. But when I asked if he’d like to come on my radio show or do an interview for this column, he shrugged and asked, “What for?”

When I asked if there would be great fanfare on the 9th, he replied, “for you maybe.” When I asked what he would do in retirement, he said, “watch the daisies, from above ground instead of below.” And when I asked how he wanted to be remembered, he said, “I don’t.”

Nope, for Jean Paul, next Saturday will be just another day of caffeinating the great unwashed, no different from any other, except it will be his last.

So come on out and let the great cantankerous man rain down one final fusillade of insults and expletives about how Starbucks is poisoning us with its swill.

Adieu, mon ami. This one’s for Laguna’s history books.

BILLY FRIED is the chief paddling officer of La Vida Laguna and member of the board of Transition Laguna. He can be reached at [email protected].