The baristas are wearing green aprons, black pants and hairstyles that fit the dress code. They swipe your card and serve your drink in a paper cup with a logo printed on the front, and you slip on a complementary colored sleeve. You sit on the earth-toned couch, next to the display of Sarah McLaughlin CDs and the rack filled with issues of today's The New York Times. Next to you is an undergrad struggling through her physics problem set and an awkward couple on a "Hey, do you want to get a cup of coffee?"

It's comfortable, safe and the coffee is pretty good. You can order the same thing in Ann Arbor, Mich. as you can in Topeka, Kan. or any one of the 171 Starbucks locations in Manhattan. Starbucks and its chain-store brethren have been blamed for the demise of thousands of independent coffee shops, bookstores and restaurants around the country. But some small stores have survived. In Ann Arbor, many of them have found a way to thrive.

"People who go there would never step foot into this place," Jimmy Curtiss said Monday as his shift at Café Ambrosia neared its end. He was talking about how different this place is from the chains that surround the Maynard Street shop. "I think the difference between us and them, at the most fundamental level, is that we attract a different demographic."

A brunette graduate student mingled with a customer while a cashier in tight jeans served black coffee to an Ann Arbor father and his eight-year old son. The barista cranked up the radio. It was playing an upbeat song that most on campus probably wouldn't recognize, but the Program in the Environment students sitting in the corner nodded in approval at the selection.

"You know a lot of businesses have a lot of lip service and rhetoric about community and securing a bunch of customers," Curtiss said. "But here it's not a front or anything like that."

Mingling with the cashiers, though, isn't what a lot of people are looking for in a coffee shop, and that's why there's room in the market for Starbucks too.

"It doesn't matter if the barista knows my name," said LSA senior Abby Morris as she sat in Starbucks last night. "I recognize all these people and I'm sure they know me, but it doesn't really matter. I still feel like it's a community, but I don't want to talk to everybody for twenty minutes."

A guy carrying a guitar over his shoulder walked past and headed downstairs. Curtiss mentioned that Ambrosia is a big supporter of local art.

"It's kind of become our reputation, since we've opened up our basement and started having shows down there," he said.

It's things like those basement shows and attracting "a different demographic" that keep stores without the focus-grouped interiors, marketing budgets, selection and buying power of Starbucks or Borders in business. Ambrosia dominates the hipster graduate student market. Despite having a much smaller inventory than the behemoth down the street, Shaman Drum survives by cleaning up on textbook sales and catering to professors. And people who want to smoke a cigarette or hookah while they work have no place to go besides South University Avenue's Rendez Vous Café.

Rendez Vous owner Nizar Elawar attributes the restaurant's success its unique products. "We provide high quality fair trade coffee, which is very appealing," he said. "Not to mention the biggest crepe menu in Ann Arbor."

Shaman Drum bookshop sits less than a hundred yards away from Borders. Although not jammed with 200,000 different books, its collection contains esoteric titles that attract academics - many of whom see their own obscure works on the shelves at Shaman.

"Our core customers are people who take the life of the mind seriously," said Shaman Drum owner Karl Pohrt. "Over the years that more often than not has meant professors

and graduate students in the humanities, although everyone is welcome."

Shaman Drum also has what could be the ultimate niche market: textbooks. The bookstore makes the bulk of its revenue twice a year, at the start of fall and winter semesters. This lets it operate a bookstore that, on its own, would probably fall prey to the big store down the street that probably has the book you're looking for in stock.

While independent stores survive by cornering a niche market, chains make their money by being bigger and stronger.

"People come here because we carry a vast selection," said Borders spokeswoman Anne Roman. Compared to a smaller bookstore, Borders is a mega mall: there's an all-in-one café, lounge and an area for musical performances. Still, Borders strives for a small-store feel. Roman said Borders customers value "that community feeling."