If you were wondering whether your favorite Starbucks will be one of the 600 stores the company is about to close, the entire list (PDF) of stores to be closed has been made available.

California will see just under 90 stores shut down while Florida and Texas just under 60. TMC’s home state of Connecticut will lose five stores — the closest is about ten miles away from TMC and a store I have never visited. Digium will lose one store in its home city of Huntsville, Al (Madison Square Mall), Manhattan will lose six and Southhampton is the only location in the prestigious Hamtons to be whacked. Expect stores to close early next year.

There have been petitions circulaing to save specific locations and government officials are trying to persuade the company not to shut certain stores.

What I find amazing about these incidents is that many used to complian that Starbucks killed off the local coffee shop and made coffeee a chain-like experience. Personally I like my Starbucks experience (I hated the coffee at first but it has grown on me). But wouldn’t we all rather let the company reduce some of their locations so local coffee brewers can have an opportunity to compete effectively?

Do we really need Starbucks across from Starbucks, adjacent to Starbucks, on top of Starbucks, etc? Let’s let the free markets work again and hopefully some independant coffee companies will be able to sieze this opportunity to launch chains of their own.

Just take a look at some of the articles I found talking about local store closings:

• Starbucks to close 12 more Long Island stores
• Muskogee Starbucks closing
• The last latte: Starbucks closing Rio Grande St. store as part of downsizing
• West Broward Boulevard store among 600 Starbucks closing nationally: More than 600 locations closing, including 12 in S. Florida
• BRIEF: Starbucks closings spare Tucson: Only one AZ store on hit list