June 2023, by Britta Gustafson (CC BY-SA)
6521 Pardall Road hosted the first Kinko's store and a whole bunch of restaurants over the years, including The Habit, McBurley's, Espresso Roma, and South Coast Deli. As of June 2023, it's empty and shows an Espresso Roma sign, which was a cafe there in the mid-2000s.
The original Habit in 1969
This location was the first location of The Habit in 1969 (which later left Isla Vista, but recently returned across the street). You can see an old photo of the building on The Habit's website.
Kinko's in the 1970s
Plaque marking first Kinko's location; November 2014, by Jay Freeman (CC BY-SA).
Then in 1970, this was the first location of Kinko's: "With funds from a $5,000 loan in 1969 from the Bank of America, cosigned by his father, he leased an 80-square-foot former hamburger stand in Isla Vista, near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and rented a small Xerox copier, charging customers four cents a page. He and a few friends also sold about $2,000 a day worth of notebooks and pens out of the makeshift store, wheeling the copier out on the sidewalk when the premises became too crowded."
There's a tiny photo of the original location on Orfalea's website (under "The Seventies"). And there's a plaque on the sidewalk marking this as the first Kinko's location! It was placed in 2005, and at the ceremony, the founder (Paul Orfalea) talked about the early days of the business: “[My coworkers and I] didn’t really know how to run these machines,” Orfalea said. “And if we couldn’t fix a problem we had, we’d just go surfing.”
Ad from the Daily Nexus, April 4, 1973, p. 8
1980s to present
In the mid-1980s, it became McBurley's, a locally infamous beer and burgers place (here's a story about 25 cent beers and peeing and the IV Foot Patrol).
Then it was Espresso Roma, a well-regarded coffee shop...and then the building was mostly empty for several years.
In 2006 it was briefly Isla Vista Spot, a Persian restaurant and hookah bar (after issues with building permits), and in 2010 it was briefly On the Side (a burger place).
In spring 2011, Associated Students wanted to invest $250,000 to turn the location into an "organic, local food operation" as part of a "Student Food Collective". That didn't work out though, since South Coast Deli moved in that fall.
South Coast Deli was a sandwich shop, part of a small local chain, which opened in 2011. It included a special called the "Walk of Shame". A student reviewing the newly-opened business said “This place will fuck Subway’s shit up for sure.” This location closed permanently in 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic.
February 2015, by Britta Gustafson (CC BY-SA)
