The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
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.
To quote wikipedia: Tel Aviv experiences a Mediterranean climate with hot summers and generally mild, wet winters. The average annual temperature is 20.2 °C (68.4 °F). Average temperature of the sea is 18–20 °C (64–68 °F) during the winter, and 24–29 °C (75–84 °F) during the summer.
In January, the coldest month, the average high temperature is 18.3 °C (64.9 °F), the low temperature averages 11.1 °C (52.0 °F) and the average sea temperature is 19 °C (66 °F). August, the warmest month, averages a high of 30 °C (86 °F), and a low of 22 °C (72 °F), with the average sea temperature being 30 °C (86 °F). Generally, the summer season lasts about six months, from May to October. Three months – March, April and November – are transitional, while December, January and February are the coldest months. The city receives 528 millimeters (20.8 in) of precipitation annually, which mostly occurs in the months of October through May. Summers are generally dry, and the area experiences over 300 sunny days per year.
SF has a lot of advantages over Tel Aviv (Being closer to Bay area VCs, being closer to the US market and customers, time zone differences) - but I'm not sure weather is one of them. Tel Aviv has a vibrant startup scene and lots of tech talent. Also - a lot of american expats. It's really easy to get by speaking only English and a few basic Hebrew words.
~9 months of the year you'd be sweating if you go outside & do even the slightest physical activity, like leisurely walking or cycling (mostly due to the high humidity, it's not actually that hot most of the time).
Berlin is too cold for about 3-4 months per year but the rest of the time is pleasantly cool, like San Francisco or London: bad bathing weather, but good working weather.
Other problems of Tel Aviv: poor transit, the resulting bad traffic, air pollution (it doesn't rain often and occasionally gets sand storms in the summer), noise pollution. Costs are not as prohibitive as London, NYC, or SF but significantly higher than Berlin.
I guess if you enjoy LA, Tel Aviv might be for you?
True, Berlin is cheaper than Tel Aviv, but it's also cheaper than most other German cities. Wages are also lower in Berlin.
Drink an Augustiner Dunkel for me :)
As far as transit goes - if you live and work in Tel
Aviv, you can pretty much walk wherever you need.
The average gross wage in Israel is 9,702.60 ils per month [1] (2277.78 Euro). According to a quick check [2] this gives a net of 8,302.57 ils per month (1948.94 Euro). A small apartment in good repair in a not-terrible part of Tel Aviv can easily cost ~6000 ils per month, before utilities.
Realistically if you work in Tel Aviv you either live in the suburbs, are in the top ~10% of wage earners, or are young and don't have a family to support (and live with roommates).
We probably have different definitions of "not terrible part of tel aviv". 1BRs (What israeli's call 2 rooms) go for 4000 shekels in Florentine. Walking distance from the startup scene of Rothschild, and 20 minutes by bus to the google and checkpoint area.
Lot's of people near NYC/DC raise kids in 2 bedroom apartments or townhouses for around the 2000-3000USD price range.
Remember that OP suggested Tel Aviv's bad transit is not an issue cause you can walk anywhere if you live in the city (mostly if you live somewhat near the center/downtown, but nm that for now).
Pre-tax average is in the 80k to 90k USD range for DC, though obviously double that if you're thinking about a couple. DC transit is fairly good in-city, going to the suburbs its branches rather than a grid system so the train lines will essentially take you from home to work and that's it.
Walkability depends on where you live. In the suburbs of DC (virginia/maryland), there's quite a few walkable neighborhoods but they're small and separated from the next walkable neighborhood by about 3-5 miles.
My point was that if you are raising a family in metropolitan Tel Aviv you are either wealthy or, more likely, live in the suburbs.
In which case transit & traffic matter a lot.
Do you find it easy to block out the peripheral perception that 3-4 people are just staring at you from across the room?
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.
I was working on a project at an airport - I had something like a six hour layover and set up at a nice table near the food court - I noticed I was being watched and smiled back. The kid came over to me and asked what I was doing. Seems he'd learned some HTML and JavaScript, but was being told in school that "real" programming was super-hard and not for him. We ended up spending about an hour talking about studying CS, how he could learn programming on his own and I eventually sent him away to catch his flight with my copy of the Rat-cover Python book.
He stayed in touch. Today, he's living his dream working on a rather awesome-sounding project.
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).
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?
To me, this is very much a one size doesn't fit all situation. It makes no sense to get into a huff when people are on their laptops in a cafe that permits this. That said, remarkably, some people get strangely enraged when one cafe or bar out of twenty (or hundred) establishes a no cell phone policy. Like, they aren't satisfied that they can have their way in 95% of coffee shops and bars, it has to be this specific one, right now (these folks, interestingly, often think the matter can be cleared up by simply reminding everyone which country we live in).
Public and semi-public space is important to social interactions, but the extroverts tend to get all the say in how that space is designed. Because they're the ones that speak up, well, by definition.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/opinion/sunday/the-quiet-o...
Bourbon and branch in SF bans cell phones, but that's a bar, not a cafe. I read about another one (a cafe) that bans cell phones and laptops for a certain section of the day, but I'd have to google around for it.
It's a pretty unique American thing -- you can't just sit quietly, you have to always seem busy -- kind of like eating lunch alone.
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
https://medium.com/digital-nomad-stories/bootstrapping-in-sa...
And because I'm getting nostalgic, here's a great post on the incredible food there:
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.
40 years ago, I'm guessing both of the places were still just plains. Now they are Denver suburbs. I liked being a 1/2 hour from the city and also so close to the wilderness. Probably one of the favorite places ever to live. If Denver had an ocean it would be my version of best place to live on earth.
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.
For those people who tolerate (or even like) chiclet keys, they could very well find it optimal to work on the go.
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.
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.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united...
(I never was convinced that you feel better after a rant, though. Rather, you have just worked out your "angry muscles".)
Anecdotally I'm typing this in Harpenden, 30 miles north of Soho where the cafe scene has changed totally - 20 years ago there were hardly any now it's full of them. On the other hand the Soho cafe scene is not so different from that film of it in the 50s. The Stockpot shown only closed last year.
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.
In 1989 I was still using (at home) an Atari 800 with matching disc wheel printer. Though I spent far more time in the computer lab with its Macs until I got my early graduation present. Kinda miss the lab days. I made more friends there in the sleep-deprived craziness of the overnights than I did in the coffee shops.
Are you talking about the US here? I'm pretty sure they've been around in Europe and the Middle East for centuries.
Nope, the nearest equivalent was a diner. Think "Happy Days" -- those things existed for a century.
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.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*U36hBj8i-C7JJJxS4M...
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.
"...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."
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.
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.
I think this also has relevance to the gentrification debate, though looking into the data it seems like governments continue failing on that front. I wasn't smart enough to come up with an alternative to capitalism when I was 15, I'm not smart enough to come up with an alternative to globalization now.
http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-w...
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.
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...
Texas is not "the deep south", we opened our arms and our hearts to everyone who was displaced by the hurricane. Nearly every major city in Texas participated. Moreover, we've experienced enough hurricanes to know the depth and severity of damage that can occur – and will continue to occur.
Neighbors help each other in times of crisis. Who knows, in the future maybe Louisiana will have to return the favor.
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...
The problem (as I see it) is artificial scarcity of housing which creates artificially inflated and unaffordable housing costs. Depending on what sources you look at, there are around 4-6 empty houses in the US for every homeless person.
The solution to that would be to cease the state-sponsoring of fraudulent and dishonest sub-prime mortgage shell games like the one which climaxed in 2008 and let simply the market normalize.
Who's to say what that "normal" market looks like, and what it means for housing affordability?
I suppose in a "normal market" if a surplus of supply exists affordability should increase as prices should decrease. That's Economics 101.
But in a market controlled by a monopoly/oligarchy, the price system is dictated by the recidivist whims of the super admins, rather than by the needs and desires of the user base or the physical reality of the resource(s) in question.
So in the current state of housing surplus, affordability has decreased as prices have increased.
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".
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.
> 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.
> "everyone" would mean student activists who are busy decrying the tearing down of several high rise projects
The student activists, in this case, are in fact very much against the tearing down of said highrise projects. I'm surprised that wasn't clear.
Are the high-rises whose removal the students decry not the luxury ones, or is it a different group of activist students from those who like graffiti who are the ones who want to keep the luxury high-rises?
Or are the activist art students supporters of both luxury high-rises and graffiti? I'm confused :)
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?
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.
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.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/gentrifi...
Wow. That's totally not cool. High-profile officials should be made resign over cases like those.
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?
Basically people want it both ways. Have their cakes and eat them too.
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.
BTW, apartment that I live in right now is already below the market, and if the landlord decides to adjust the price next year when my contract expires, I'll have to move. I don't feel that I'm privileged to some special treatment just because I already live here though: free market is what it is.
Because there are costs involved with relocating, which the former aren't being given any choice about. Finding a new place to live and moving there involves a lot of time, effort and stress. Not to mention any friends and family they're now less able to keep in touch with.
1) The people being priced out are often the people that made the neighborhood nicer to live in. Developers don't improve neighborhoods, people do. And these people are usually the first to go when developments move in and drive up the cost, because they are often the most vulnerable to the price increases. (Your artists, musicians, students, young families, folks on shoestring budgets opening hipster coffee shops and restaurants, etc)
2) It's not so much that all these people feel like they deserve to live in this one particular nice place. You don't see people complaining that they can't live in gated communities or mansions. It's that nearly every lower-class or middle-class urban place that was even slightly nice to live in is rapidly becoming "rich-people-only". Where does that end?
Are middle class people eventually going to economically banned from all urban environments nationwide? Because that's the trajectory we're currently headed in, unless some massive correction happens.
> why people who already live somewhere (but rent and don't own)
Renters are highest risk, but it's not just renters who get displaced. Property owners can also get displaced through gentrification -- owning property does not make someone immune to this problem
Anyone who has lived in a typical urban core from the 90s knows that poor neighborhoods don't just start having cleaner streets, more shops and services out of the blue displacing liquor stores and repair shops and weeds.
But eh — those guys actually have to move _in_ to gentrification to happen. And before they move in, it's usually really ordinary poor people moving out: because, believe it or not, "starving" liberal art major is not as poor as an illegal immigrant family with 5 kids.
> It's that nearly every lower-class or middle-class urban place that was even slightly nice to live in is rapidly becoming "rich-people-only". Where does that end?
I'm not from US, so I may not be seeing what you're talking about exactly, but you're talking about late-stage gentrifying here. But early stage gentrifying is the opposite: it makes poor, awful areas into those nice middle-class areas to begin with. So by the time you (we're talking about low-middle class, right?) have to move out when the area is full of elite condos, there's another neighbourhood that just became trendy enough for you to move it.
> Property owners can also get displaced through gentrification -- owning property does not make someone immune to this problem
Don't see a real difference here: it's all just free market mechanisms regulating situations where a lot of different people compete for the same thing.
Some people live in tight knit communities. If they are forced out then they lose a massive piece of their life that is not easily replaced.
Different cultures will obviously have different views regarding communities and societies at large.
It plays very nicely into current economic, racial and so on divides in the cultural war.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_at_Life_%28film_series%29
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?
I don't "mess with people" going about their business for fun.
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.
Of course talking about "coffee shops" proper -- the poor just make do with Dunkin Doughnuts and the like...
(1) A storehouse for maturing wine, a winery.
(2) A store specializing in Hispanic groceries.
(3) (slang, New York) Any convenience store.
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.
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.
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...
Helpful bots that monitors your communication and suggests cultural jokes, to impress people?
Additionally I would simply love a bot like that going around explaining popular media quotes. I frequent the SpaceX subreddit and they have one explaining space related acronyms whenever any are found in the discussion. Makes reading it a lot more pleasant.
IMO this is the source of some people's impression that humour isn't welcome here. My experience is the opposite - on-topic (and funny) comments do well even if only a joke or quip, but off-topic humour sinks, even if clever and civil.
I'm quite lowbrow and really enjoy the more clever comment chains on Reddit, but I also appreciate the HN alternative, where attempts at pun chains, etc. sink to the bottom and on-topic thoughts rise.
(The right way to do this would be to add a feature to the HN/reddit forum software that allows unobtrusive footnotes to comments. Acronyms could just be auto-hyperlinked (with short definition in the alt text) in the original comment.)
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.
One indeed wonders, how much business is done in a coffee shop's today in relation to the past compared to todays times.