The smell of coffee is potent when you walk into the original Peet's on Vine Street in Berkeley. The feeling of nostalgia is not.

The shop reopened yesterday after a remodel, and a little room in back pays tribute to founder Alfred Peet and others with photos, articles and paraphernalia. But the store isn't as amazing as other Peet's coffeehouses, including the one in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood.

No matter: It's an institution in Berkeley, and at 4 p.m. the place is crowded and the line is a dozen customers long.

Alfred Peet opened this store on April Fool's Day, 1966, the beginning of the "specialty coffee revolution" in the U.S. -- which basically meant turning away from Sanka and toward good espresso.

Starbucks' founders learned a lot about coffee roasting from Peet, and one of them -- Jerry Baldwin -- eventually bought the company, before it went public. He stayed on Peet's board and another Starbucks founder, Gordon Bowker, has served on the board as well.

Peet died two years ago, his coffee legacy firmly established through a beloved dark roast and a publicly traded coffee shop chain that has managed to grow profits even in this economy.