NUMBER THREE FOR COUPA ... Coupa Cafe, the Venezuelan coffee shop at 538 Ramona St. in Palo Alto, opened another outlet last month; this is its second at Stanford University and its third in the Palo Alto area. The new cafe doles out coffee in a small kiosk outside the Green and Meyer libraries on the Stanford campus. Coupa's other Stanford location, which opened in October 2008, is in the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building (aka Y2E2 Building). The first Coupa, which started in downtown Palo Alto in 2004 and also serves an eclectic array of food, continues to be a popular venue for the wi-fi, coffee-drinking crowd.

TOO MANY DOWNTOWN VACANCIES? ... Meanwhile, Coupa Cafe founder and co-owner Jean Paul Coupal returned to Palo Alto in early May after 14 months in his country-of-residence Venezuela and was shocked by the two dozen or so vacancies on University Avenue — and, he said, by how some landlords treat tenants. Triggered by a sudden 30-day lease-termination of a neighboring women's clothing store on Ramona Street, Coupal voiced anger at the "unjust treatment" of short-notice tenants, and about the fashionable clothing shop's being replaced by a store selling tennis shoes. "In Venezuela we have to deal with a dictatorship. In Palo Alto we have to deal with unjust landlords," he said. He added that he wants other businesses and business organizations to protest such violations of "social responsibility," he said. "Everyone is just appalled" among those he's spoken with about the matter, he added.