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Comment by mikrl | Hacker News Reader

That is one thing I noticed about North American social culture, the relative lack of [semi-]public spaces to just exist.

In the UK there are countless nooks, crannies, parks etc to just kill time with people.

Even the pub is an institution expressly for this purpose. You go in, buy a pint when you want and are left alone to your friends/business. None of this “What can I get you? How is everything tasting? Anything else?” hyper-commodification of simply being somewhere just for the sake of it.

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This makes me think that non pushy spaces like UK pubs should be given advantageous tax treatment.

Are there any “coffee pubs”? I personally enjoy an occasional beer but I don’t know if I’d want to repeatedly invite folks to hang out for hours in a place that largely serves alcohol drinks in mixed male/female company. Seems like it could become a headache in the US.

One other issue in the US is that any third space becomes a long term hangout of all the local homeless, which causes people not to want to go there. Several local Starbucks have this problem and I stopped going there. It pushed me to drive 15 minutes to find one I can hang out without being distracted by people with obvious mental illness who need treatment.

> One other issue in the US is that any third space becomes a long term hangout of all the local homeless, which causes people not to want to go there. Several local Starbucks have this problem and I stopped going there.

Yes. Our local Starbucks, at the Redwood City CA train station, removed all their furniture and closed their bathrooms. Now it's a big empty room with a bleak counter, where people sometimes come in and buy something.

Almost all Starbuckses are bad, but you have several other options with plenty of seating near the Redwood City Caltrain.

Try La Tartine just around the corner, which has plentiful seating, decent prices, and closes pretty late.

Also, the Philz down the street and Coffeebar further down the street (although both have higher prices and worse hours than La Tartine).

Terrible. It's almost like if Starbucks could invest in the police, the benefits would be win-win.

> Are there any “coffee pubs”?

Agora in Houston is a Greek-owned coffee shop that operates as a coffee shop day and night but also offers alcohol at night, and sometimes has belly dancers and such. It's pretty unique - I don't think I've ever found anywhere else like it (in the US anyway).

That's just a cultural difference on the expectation of service. Europe is more towards the "I'll summon you when needed". The US it's expected they'll check in on you and to some extent that you'll wait until they check in to ask for something.

The US has bars and parks and coffee shops too. Plenty of places to just go and be

And Japan has both. Either you don't have time to look at the menu before they show up taking your order or people shout "SUMIMASEN!" over the whole restaurant.

Eh, so far in my experience nobody's been shouting across the restaurant or hole-in-the-wall place; normally it's a hand wave or signal, or often a button or bell.

Maybe I haven't been going to exciting places...

And as for taking my order before reading the menu, depends how fast you can decypher the translation of whatever app you use :) (assuming a non-Japanese speaker)

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