The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/08/coffee-shops-gentrification-urban-change

by misnamed • 10 years ago

184 175 10 years ago

Xcelerate• 10 years ago

I love looking in through the outside window and seeing everyone on MacBooks, it’s busy, it’s exciting and yet you’ll get someone walking passed saying ‘Oh my god, look in there, everyone is on a laptop! What’s wrong with them! Why don’t they talk to each other!?’

This is funny, because it perfectly describes the difference in attitude between me and my father. He gets annoyed when he walks into a coffee shop and sees everyone on their phones and laptops. On the other hand, I think the atmosphere is quite cozy, and love taking my own stuff to work on to that kind of cheerful environment. I almost never start a conversation, but I do enjoy being around other people.

nxzero4• 10 years ago

Both are fun; that is just enjoying the feel of it working - and talking to people too.

mysterypie• 10 years ago

I think the atmosphere is quite cozy, and love taking my own stuff to work on

I can remember a time (1980's and earlier) when the modern version of the coffee shop didn't exist.

The nearest equivalent was a bar: Dimly lit, filled with smoke, loud annoying music, aggressive people, and a waiter coming around every 10 minutes to ask/demand if you want another drink. If you dared bring in some papers or a book to read, you'd get dirty looks, rude comments, or worse.

Thank god for the modern coffee shop and the shift in attitude.

santaclaus• 10 years ago

The 1980s? I know a few coffee shops that are still like that.

ido9• 10 years ago

Might be geographical? Many of Vienna's most popular cafés were established in the 1800s.

xzi2• 10 years ago

I remember those days. And I couldn't go into the bars, being in my teens in the mid-to-late 80s. The best option was the all night places like IHOP. As long as you tipped well and weren't loud, they'd let you hold down a booth with nothing but coffee for most of the night.

And then moved to a college town which already had 3-4 competing coffee shops in 1989. Felt like heaven. Doing homework on my old Powerbook. Sitting with friends, having a smoke, if by myself then reading something difficult and hoping a cute smart girl would notice.

Shengbo4• 10 years ago

I can remember a time (1980's and earlier) when the modern version of the coffee shop didn't exist.

Are you talking about the US here? I'm pretty sure they've been around in Europe and the Middle East for centuries.

coldtea4• 10 years ago

I can remember a time (1980's and earlier) when the modern version of the coffee shop didn't exist. The nearest equivalent was a bar.

Nope, the nearest equivalent was a diner. Think "Happy Days" -- those things existed for a century.

zappo2938• 10 years ago

Depends where you live. I grew up in scientific communities and there were always cafes. They were very much like coffee shops but the only choice was regular or decaf coffee.

marincounty• 10 years ago

Yea, but there were more little cafes(cafes that encouraged cousomers to stay.), books stores, magazine stands, and people just outside--actually talking to each other. The only look down was maybe a quick adjustment to the Walkman.

In high school, I worked in a little place called cafe Nuvo. No one had laptops, but they talked. They wrote in journals. They read books. Talked about philosophy, and politics. Business people did their paperwork there. It was a neat place, but run horridly by a dentist who didn't know how to run a business.

I recall even the fast foods joints encouraged kids/adults to hang out. I never felt pressured by establishment staff to order something, or leave.

Was it better than today? In a way? I definetly miss the book stores. It was easier to talk to people back then, at least least for myself.

wtbob• 10 years ago

I remember pubs in the late 90s: dimly lit, filled with smoke, quiet rock music, quiet people, waitress who'd drop by when you called her over. I could bring in all my books and write a term paper for an entire afternoon, and they never minded. It was glorious and, unlike the coffee shop, illegal nowadays.

dkopi9• 10 years ago

My father used to blast me for years for being on my laptop all the time. Today he actually spends more time with his laptop at coffee shops than I do.

RyanMcGreal• 10 years ago

Obligatory image:

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*U36hBj8i-C7JJJxS4M...

justifier• 10 years ago

what the hell is water?

nxzero4• 10 years ago

“What’s the WiFi password?”

Interesting; tomorrow I'm going to ask five people this exact question just to see what happens.

EDIT: Obviously if you've read the article, it states this is like asking "do you know what time it is?" - that is it's an known excuse to start a conversation. Personally, I don't believe this, hence my experiment.

WalterBright• 10 years ago

penny-get-your-own-wifi

nxzero4• 10 years ago

Penny: Hey, Sheldon, did you change your wifi password again?

Sheldon: Yes, it's "Penny, get your own wifi." No spaces.

___

TV-Show: The Big Bang Theory

Source: http://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/hey-sheldon-did-you-change-y...

golergka4• 10 years ago

Why is the author so quick to assume that everyone sees gentrification as something bad? There's been vocal opposition to it, but it doesn't mean that everybody feels that way.

nxzero4• 10 years ago

Why Is Gentrification Such a Bad Word?

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/gentrifi...

guard-of-terra• 10 years ago

"seizing homes a family has owned for generations because of $150 owed in property taxes, even if that was just a clerical error; changing the locks while carrying out “repairs,” lying that the building is being condemned, or turning off utilities"

Wow. That's totally not cool. High-profile officials should be made resign over cases like those.

golergka4• 10 years ago

I started reading the article and it told about tricks that landlords used to evict renters.

I don't understand. Why can't landlords just refuse to prolong the rent contract? It's their property — how come renters become a problem for them?

mc325• 10 years ago

When they don't have it people want it, and when they get it, they don't want it. Run down cities, rust belt cities wish for gentrification, people who live in places going down hill wish for it too, it brings safer neighborhoods, better stores, more jobs, on the other hand people decry rising rents and "changing the character" of the neighborhood, as if unemployment and the transients didn't also"change the character" of the neighborhood.

Basically people want it both ways. Have their cakes and eat them too.

paublyrne2• 10 years ago

Whats the point of having cake if you can't eat it?

Terr_• 10 years ago

Or maybe people want a middle-ground (in outcome or in rate-of-change) which for whatever reason doesn't seem to be in the cards.

jacobush• 10 years ago

What people want is for their neighbourhood to be better, while not in the process being driven from their homes to make room for wealthier people. Maybe it's naive or a pipe dream.

austinjp• 10 years ago

I don't think it's a binary either-or. People obviously want safety and opportunity. They also tend to want to preserve the micro-culture of their neighbourhood. "Globalisation" (whatever that is) feels homogenous and corporate. Some people don't want that, they don't want to live in a place that could be anywhere else. They want to own the land and property, not be priced out.

I'm quite surprised at people here suggesting that it's okay to displace the poor. It's not. Change, process and improvement are most effective when they take everyone along for the ride. Everyone's seen Gataca, right?

I'm sure there are plenty of alternatives to the current gentrification model. Plenty of low-cost housing, for one. Sensitivity from local councils who take a long-term view and try to protect local business, for another. A complex discussion, I don't have all the answers.

venomsnake• 10 years ago

A lot of factors converge to make gentrification opposition the next cause celebre. Sometimes even upheld by the gentrifiers themselves.

It plays very nicely into current economic, racial and so on divides in the cultural war.

lamby2• 10 years ago

I remember when we used to call gentrification "progress".

briandear4• 10 years ago

It's the Guardian. That's their thing. That paper employs an admitted KGB spy (after his spying was revealed.) Same paper that supported Stalin. The Guardian has a deep rooted history in the 'class' struggle. Not a condemnation, just context. It's the American Left equivalent of MSNBC or analogous to the right wing Washington Times.

addicted• 10 years ago

Comparing the guardian to the Washington Times...

That's a new one.

One's a highly respected newspaper age old newspaper with a very well designed independent funding structure which at worst has a slight leftward bias.

The other is owned by the Moonies.

tim3335• 10 years ago

It's a bit tongue in cheek. Also property / rent prices are a major problem in London. All sorts of people are trying to move here and there's an approximately fixed supply.

omonra2• 10 years ago

"what everyone hates about urban change and gentrification – first come the creatives and their coffee shops, then the young professionals, then the luxury high-rises and corporate chains that push out original residents"

I personally have no problem with it. And if we're talking about crappy and dangerous neighborhoods that are becoming upscale - I love it.

If anything I think it's the sort of process that benefits majority of population while extracting a cost on a minority. If we look at total effect, it's certainly net positive.

TulliusCicero• 10 years ago

Fun related fact: when an area is gentrifying, more development is actually correlated with LESS displacement for the existing residents, not more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/12/the-p...

"...the California Legislative Analyst’s Office recently released some positive data backing up this point: Particularly in the Bay Area since 2000, the researchers found, low-income neighborhoods with a lot of new construction have witnessed about half the displacement of similar neighborhoods that haven’t added much new housing."

ehnto• 10 years ago

My uneducated guess might be that the new developments add more density and thus lower land/rent prices overall. I am not sure about that though.

In my city as well, new development often come with affordability requirements for the exact reason of not displacing the existing community.

Adelaide, Australia has a really cool process for careful urban development. The city makes sure many existing buildings stay put and that new developments accommodate them in various ways. It specifically limits high rises, with the term mid-rise mixed use zoning being able to describe most of the dense areas.

The quip about coffee shops, creatives then professionals still rings true. But it stops short of high rises, and intentionally tries to mix all residents and wealth brackets.

nefitty3• 10 years ago

I can't help interpreting your opinion as, "it's ok to kick the poor people out, as long as the upper classes, government and businesses prosper." People aren't numbers to throw into a mean function. That "net positive" argument is what has been used to excuse globalization's "there have to be some losers" philosophy, which disproportionately affects those already in poverty.

A sense of community is one of the few things poor neighborhoods can offer their inhabitants. When those impoverished people are elbowed out and away from each other to make way for another coffee shop, it becomes hard to sympathize with the moneyed class's desire for late-night gourmet poke.

Edit: Taking a look at TulliusCicero's WaPo link is making me reconsider my position.

sgillen• 10 years ago

What exactly would you offer as an alternative to globalization? Purely curious.

gogopuppygogo• 10 years ago

An "alternative to globalization", you say?

I vote for Inter Planetary Commerce. Let's give Musk a $3T budget for a couple of years and see where we get. Plenty of jobs will be created if he can terraform Mars.

cossatot• 10 years ago

I don't know a whole lot about the general outcomes of those slowly and progressively displaced by gentrification but in sufficiently small catastrophies (i.e. not Syria) the displaced lower classes often do better economically. For example, Katrina refugees who stayed away are reported to have more income and live in safer and less impoverished areas with better schools (e.g. [1]). The city is more diverse and affluent as well (look for Citylab article on this, I can't look up atm) so it might not be a selection bias thing.

However complaints all around are that social networks and cultures were destroyed. It seems that when it's time to move, people move towards economic opportunity rather than for culture, etc. Hopefully with time those social networks can develop into the next rich permutation.

[1] http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/a...

mseebach• 10 years ago

The problem with the opposite position, that even the greatest net positive is invalidated if even a single person is inconvenienced[1] (which, reductio ad absurdum is what you seem to suggest), will obviously lead to practically no change ever. Indeed, it will most likely lead to decline, as any active attempt to change things will probably inconvenience at least a few people, while you can't pin such a charge against passive apathy, even if it long term inconveniences a much greater number of people.

Even the creatives with their coffee shops (generally considered the acceptable level of gentrification, a fact that is obviously totally unrelated to the fact that a substantial subset of people fretting over gentrification are creatives in coffee shops) probably displaces some local activity, perhaps a "brown cafe" loses some customers to the new coffee shop etc.

I recently went on a street-art themed walking tour of Shoreditch in east London, and the guide started the tour by explaining how in the late 80s the area was a total write-off with poverty, violence and prostitution left, right and center, and how entire houses changed hands for as little as £1 -- and ended it by railing against the building of new apartments. The irony of he, himself, being a recent transplant to the area (he alluded to his small-town upbringing, and he was much too young to have moved there pre-1990) did not seem to trouble him much.

Bottom line: clearly there is SOME level of positive development that justifies SOME level of inconveniences. Perhaps we should be a little better at articulating the positive benefits instead of knee-jerk defending those inconvenienced by progress and idealising the gritty urban semi-slums being displaced.

PS: I'm very happy the WaPo link is making you reconsider your position.

1: This article describes the plight of "the poor" being pestered with offer to buy their flats for cash, offers they are perfectly in their right to decline. That's being inconvenienced, not kicked out. http://www.wnyc.org/story/de-blasios-affordable-housing-figh...

kdamken• 10 years ago

So what's the solution here? How else would you improve those kinds of neighborhoods? Do you expect the poor people are going to suddenly all get better jobs and simultaneously decide to make their neighborhood nicer?

forgetsusername3• 10 years ago

I can't help interpreting your opinion as, "it's ok to kick the poor people out, as long as the upper classes, government and businesses prosper.

I can't help interpreting the original argument as "we're fine with our people here (the artists), but we don't want those other people in our community".

johnmarinelli• 10 years ago

i honestly can't tell if trolling or not.

retube• 10 years ago

If anything I think it's the sort of process that benefits majority of population while extracting a cost on a minority. If we look at total effect, it's certainly net positive.

Absolutely. Otherwise we'd all be still living in wooden shacks tilling the fields. Change inevitably effects some people negatively, but without it things can't, on average, get better.

doktrin3• 10 years ago

"what everyone hates about urban change and gentrification – first come the creatives and their coffee shops, then the young professionals, then the luxury high-rises and corporate chains that push out original residents"
I personally have no problem with it. And if we're talking about crappy and dangerous neighborhoods that are becoming upscale - I love it.

"everyone" in this context meaning "everyone who holds the views of the author"

Here in PGH, "everyone" would mean student activists who are busy decrying the tearing down of several high rise projects in a part of town that had been on a downward slope since the late 70's. Neighborhoods that only a few years ago "closed at dark" (literally) due to pervasive criminality are now economic hubs.

At least in this case, most people seem to be quite happy with economic development in what used to be no-go areas. Nonetheless, there's a vocal minority of affluent art students who are busy putting up graffiti about "preserving culture". You can't ever make everyone happy, but the author's "everyone" isn't in fact everyone.

colanderman3• 10 years ago

I think you used "to decry" to mean exactly the opposite of its actual meaning. ("To decry" means to denounce as harmful, not to promote.)

StevePerkins• 10 years ago

"what everyone hates about urban change and gentrification..."

I don't mean to be inflammatory, but I've never understood exactly what "everybody" sees as the desired state.

When white people move out of urban centers, it is "white flight"... a negative phenomenon. When white people move into urban centers, it is "gentrification"... also a negative phenomenon.

Are white people just considered inherently evil, and their existence a negative phenomenon? Short of total income redistribution, and mandatory relocation (as ethnic groups tend to coalesce even without gaps in income)... what exactly is the inequality and diversity solution that "everyone" wants?

noxToken• 10 years ago

I see your point, but it's not just moving in/out. It's the subtext of why. I don't think anyone can be faulted for fleeing a neighborhood in the name of safety. The same can likely be said for moving into more impoverish areas that have the potential to grow into prosperous neighborhood. This holds true regardless of race.

If someone is just throwing those terms around just because people move in or out of neighborhoods, then they're missing the overall context of what those terms mean.

what exactly is the inequality and diversity solution that "everyone" wants?

I don't think this can be easily addressed. Most people want their neighborhoods safe with drivable streets and walkable paths. Some see culture in the history of their neighborhoods. Others want modern architecture and amenities. It really depends on who you ask.

omonra2• 10 years ago

I don't think the people who are upset about both white flight and gentrification think of things in 'white people' terms.

Rather they focus on blacks (or whichever minority the whites happen to be fleeing or displacing). It's a natural liberal tendency to focus on the 'underprivileged'. I believe it stems from the (unconscious) belief that the whites will look out for themselves - but blacks et al need to be helped. White man's burden 2.0, if you will.

For example in today's NYT there is a long article about lack of black pitchers in the US baseball league (they don't count spanish speaking blacks as aa). And there is a regular recurring piece about lack of black players in certain NFL positions (while they're actually 70% of all players).

Meanwhile I've never seen a similar article about dearth of white players in the NBA or the NFL. To an outside observer this might appear racist - but the journalist writing these pieces probably think that looking out for minorities is just what good people do. And whites will manage to take care of themselves.

oska• 10 years ago

I recommend the included YouTube clip. It's from a series of short documentaries called Look at Life [1], produced between 1959 and 1969 in the UK.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_at_Life_%28film_series%29

PascLeRasc• 10 years ago

This is very similar to PG's most recent essay about making Pittsburgh a startup hub: http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html

jkot• 10 years ago

I think there was post while ago which tried to predict property price raise based on number of new coffee shops.

lamby2• 10 years ago

It's probably not a bad idea - I mean, why not piggy-back and/or trust Starbucks research and experience in where to locate stores!

k-mcgrady• 10 years ago

That post is mentioned in this article.

groundCode• 10 years ago

I find it interesting that Coffee shops have such a long standing history in London given that tea is basically the national drink.

test1235• 10 years ago

London is practically a country unto itself as far as customs and behaviours go.

notahacker• 10 years ago

The coffee shops also served tea, and both were exotic novelties when the shops first opened. But tea became affordable as an everday drink for the common man much earlier because the British empire had access to so much of it.

For all our famed fondness for tea, we make the top 50 for per capita coffee consumption ahead of some of the countries we import it from too.

dkopi9• 10 years ago

Commenting on this post while I'm at a coffee shop myself.

If I had to pick one city for having the best coffee shops, it would probably be Tel Aviv. The coffee is great, all coffee shops are laptop friendly (and gladly provide you with the wifi password), and people are very open to social interaction with strangers. At any given moment you'll find a designer working on a logo, an architecture student reading a post blasting gentrification, entrepreneurs discussing their new startup, or freelancers looking for a break from working at home. Tel Aviv coffee shops are also very dog friendly, and that's always a great conversation starter.

I often find that "could you watch my laptop while i go to the bathroom?" followed by "hey, what are you working on?" is usually the best way to get to know new people.

I even find that I'm a lot more productive when I work at a coffee shop instead of an office. A coffee shop provides with just enough distraction and people watching when you need to take a break, but not enough that you completely lose concentration and focus.

tim3335• 10 years ago

What do you think of Tel Aviv as a place to hang out working on a startup compared to SF? I'm a brit thinking of a change of scene.

lmm2• 10 years ago

The great advantage of SF is its astonishingly consistent climate. I can't speak to Tel Aviv at all, but I'd say make sure you're comfortable working at typical temperatures there - I think that's a key (and unnoticed) part of productivity.

ido9• 10 years ago

How much do you need to be around other startup people? Mediterranean EU cities will generally be easier and mostly cheaper to stay at.

abledon• 10 years ago

When I'm in a coffee shop sometimes the people watching me as I code in a somewhat frenzied manner, kinda weirds me out.

Do you find it easy to block out the peripheral perception that 3-4 people are just staring at you from across the room?

dkopi9• 10 years ago

It's just that. a perception. Everyone's a bit self aware, but the truth is that people around us are also very self aware.

People will look at you every once in a while, but they're looking at everyone else as well. People watching is fun, and a main reason people go to coffee shops.

If you ever do catch someone staring at you, just give them a friendly smile. They might even be waiting for a signal that it's okay to come over and ask what it is you're working on, because you seem very passionate about it.

Grishnakh• 10 years ago

I've done coding and other laptop work in coffee shops many times, and I'm usually acutely aware of my surroundings and people around me. I've never noticed anyone staring at me in a coffee shop.

Are you doing something unusual to bring this attention on yourself? Or do you live in a place with jerks? Also, what ethnicity were the people staring at you? Some cultures (like Indian) don't have the cultural aversion to staring that westerners do (though usually ones who come over here figure that out pretty quickly and stop it).

cylinder4• 10 years ago

Laptops are the opposite of what I want to see in cafes, actually I prefer that they have an outright ban

Raphmedia• 10 years ago

Not everyone has internet at home.

ASlave2Gravity• 10 years ago

Why's that?

dvanduzer2• 10 years ago

Laptops are a fantastic way for more introverted people to meet each other. Why do you think it's all the rage to paper your Macbook like a NASCAR driver's jacket? Sure, part of it is just the pure hustle of startups, and the low cost of logo stickers as marketing.

To a potential startup founders a few years out of college, the coffee shop full of laptops is going to feel just like the library during study week. (Maybe someone a lot younger than I am would say the college libraries just feel like coffee shops these days. Get off my lawn.)

Have you ever sipped a latte with your headphones on and caught someone's eye as they concentrated as intensely as you're trying to? Then did you notice the GitHub sticker and smile to yourself? Then did you notice the <STARTUP NAME HERE> sticker and know you would really have something to say to them? (Assuming you work up the courage, dang, they're gorgeous.)

If you don't want to spend time alone with strangers in quiet reflection, get your frappucino to go, and find a different social club, eh?

samtp2• 10 years ago

Admittedly I've never been to Israel, but I'd argue that Ho Chi Minh City (and Vietnam in general) has by far the best cafe culture of any city in the world. Vietnam is the 2nd leading coffee producer in the world, and the past French colonial rule has deeply ingrained coffee (as well as baguettes) in the Viet culture.

HCMC has more cafes than any other city in the world, basically 2-3 cafes per block. While most cafes are quite simple, there are hundreds that are just as hip and modern (if not more so) as anything that you'd find in the western world. You also get unique types of cafes such as garden cafes with huge trees and waterfalls and pet cafes with fuzzy cats/exotic birds lounging about. Many open 24 hours as well.

Best part about it is from ordering a single coffee (for about $1), you get free tea refills all day. No one ever pressures you to leave and everywhere has very good quality, free wifi.

This link is pretty out of date (and mostly focuses on city center) [0] but shows some of the places available. You can also use Google translate on Vietnam's version of Yelp and click on some of the cafe collections to get a more thorough idea. [1]

[0] http://www.nomadicnotes.com/travel-blog/ho-chi-minh-city-caf... [1] http://www.foody.vn/ho-chi-minh/bo-suu-tap

dkopi9• 10 years ago

I love Saigon. Nomadlist has a nice guide too: https://nomadlist.com/digital-nomad-guide-to-ho-chi-minh-cit...

matwood2• 10 years ago

A coffee shop provides with just enough distraction and people watching when you need to take a break, but not enough that you completely lose concentration and focus.

This right here is why I get so much done in coffee shops. It's almost like white noise that keeps you focused without day dreaming.

When I lived in Denver I was 100% remote worker and would work every afternoon in one of three coffee shops. One shop was a chain, but they were very friendly and eventually I knew all the people who worked there. The other 2 were local.

One of them was owned and run by this guy who literally loved coffee. He would talk about new beans he got that 'spoke' to him. His coffee is still some of the best I ever had. He also just let me run a tab and I would pay him every month.

The final place was more of a cafe. It was large, and would sometimes have live music starting in the late afternoon. It also had a lot of people who worked from there that I got to know. I asked the owner once if hanging out there all day bothered her and she said if people bought something once every hour or two she was coming out ahead. So I made sure to do that anytime I was there.

I miss working in random places, since they really led me to focus for some reason.

cafard2• 10 years ago

Do you mind telling a long-ago Coloradan the neighborhoods? Forty years ago I used to go to Muddy Waters of the Platte, which was 15th St. across the Platte & train yards from downtown. Apart from that, I remember one around Larimer & Speer, but not much else.

ben_jones2• 10 years ago

So what you're saying is Tel Aviv coffee shops are ideal for tech workers? Got to remember most of the world could care less about the logo designer, the architect, the programmer, etc. It worries me that tech is becoming a social club where you're either in it it completely or out of it. What's it like to be a low-wage blue collar worker in SF outside of the tech industry? This post would make it seems like they have nothing to talk about.

dkopi9• 10 years ago

Actually, no. Tel Aviv Coffee shops are ideal for tech workers. And being in tech and commenting on hacker news, I obviously state that first of all. But Tel Aviv coffee shops are packed with people of all types and shapes. Whether it's a social worker unwinding after a long week at work, a photographer who can't afford an office, so he meets the engaged couple to discuss terms at a coffee shop, or the Tel Aviv University student with her low-wage blue collar immigrant parents who came to visit her in the city over the weekend.

I can understand and relate to the fear of tech becoming "a social club". But that's much more of an American thing. Being a warm Mediterranean country in the middle of the Levant, Israelis don't like "closed social clubs". They have much more of a "Melting pot" mentality.

cardine• 10 years ago

How do you all stay productive with laptops? I can't imagine doing any actual coding work unless I have two monitors and a work station.

mixedCase• 10 years ago

In my case using tiling window managers and 10 workspaces makes working on a laptop tolerable enough. That said, I do have to bring my own keyboard.

For those people who tolerate (or even like) chiclet keys, they could very well find it optimal to work on the go.

simonebrunozzi• 10 years ago

I tend to agree with you. I haven't been to Tel Aviv in a while... could you recommend 2-3 places that are worth checking out? I will be back there for a week in September.

coldtea4• 10 years ago

Because they are not essential (like a bodega or gas station would be), and most are tied to a more laid-back, more bohemian lifestyle -- which means enough non-poor people are coming in the neighborhood to make them viable.

Of course talking about "coffee shops" proper -- the poor just make do with Dunkin Doughnuts and the like...

narag2• 10 years ago

What's a "bodega"? I'm surprised to see this word in English, also considered as a basic service (not a wine cellar then?). In Spanish it's one of the two evolutions of Greek "apotheke", the other one being "botica" (farmacy).

coldtea4• 10 years ago

I know it with these meanings, but used it in the third form (here's from Wiktionary):

(1) A storehouse for maturing wine, a winery.

(2) A store specializing in Hispanic groceries.

(3) (slang, New York) Any convenience store.

briandear4• 10 years ago

It's New Yorker slang for 'small convenience store usually owner operated.'

tim3335• 10 years ago

Some pics of the kind of thing refered to https://www.google.com/search?q=bodega&num=20&source=lnms&tb...

Merad• 10 years ago

the poor just make do with Dunkin Doughnuts and the like

Oh brother, HN's insulation from the real world is showing... If you can afford $2 for a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee on a regular basis, you probably are't poor. Most of them "make do" with a cup of Folgers/Maxwell House/etc brewed at home in a Mr. Coffee.

coldtea4• 10 years ago

Oh brother, HN's insulation from the real world is showing... If you can afford $2 for a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee on a regular basis, you probably are't poor. Most of them "make do" with a cup of Folgers/Maxwell House/etc brewed at home in a Mr. Coffee.

True, I was not talking about starting or "trailer park" poor here.

Poor as in working class/lower middle class folks -- generally the kind of people that the people at Starbucks would snub.

ewanvalentine• 10 years ago

I'm not sure why urban progress can be considered a 'curse'.

Zelmor2• 10 years ago

I love myself some fine light roasted filter coffee as much as the next person. My biggest concern with these places, however is IT security. Anyone who hasn't played around with their laptops once receiving the wifi password, running their chosen network analysis tools/penetration suite and messing with people whose screen you might even see from two tables away, hands up in the air.

I will not be first in line, mind you. Thus, I advise people to use their own connection or ssh to their home network when using even protected wifi in coffee shops. The burglar already has the keys to the house, and you are a willing guest to the table. Who will take responsibility for your safety if not you?

forgetsusername3• 10 years ago

Anyone who hasn't played around with their laptops once receiving the wifi password, running their chosen network analysis tools/penetration suite and messing with people

I don't "mess with people" going about their business for fun.

illumin8• 10 years ago

Any Macbook has a default ignore all inbound traffic setting on their firewall - provided reasonable use of SSL services (Gmail, Google Apps, Dropbox, etc) and good web hygiene you would be totally safe surfing random insecure public wifi all day long.

foldr2• 10 years ago

Anyone who hasn't played around with their laptops once receiving the wifi password, running their chosen network analysis tools/penetration suite and messing with people whose screen you might even see from two tables away, hands up in the air.

That's not ethical, and depending on exactly what you're doing, possibly not legal either. There's very clearly an implicit assumption that coffee shop wifi is for your own personal (and relatively light use). If you want to do anything else, you should get the permission of the owners.

Zelmor2• 10 years ago

As much as I agree with you, it is really naive to expect everyone to behave ethically. We wouldn't need security if the world was as such.

Zenst• 10 years ago

Well the insurance industry was somewhat born on the back of coffee with the formation of reinsurance for ships by a group of people who used to meet in a coffee shop that went on to form Llyods of London, and the World of reinsurance and insurance grew from there.

One indeed wonders, how much business is done in a coffee shop's today in relation to the past compared to todays times.

jackfoxy• 10 years ago

...and the founding of Lloyds of London and the New York Stock Exchange were both associated with coffee shops.

The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

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