The French cafe is dying | Hacker News Reader

The French cafe is dying

nytimes.com

43 pointspg47 comments

I'm surprised by this article. I live in Toulouse, France and quite the opposite appears to be happening. Almost all of the run down cafés in the centre of Toulouse have undergone extensive refits in the last year and are now packed.

The article does make me wonder to what extent these bar owners are failing to update their run down bars and hence they are losing their clientele. My experience of the French is that they do love to complain about things not being like they used to be, perhaps these people should look to Toulouse as an example.

It may be that refits require loans, and loans are hard to get now; moreover, the article may have been talking more about cafes in smaller, less busy towns, which banks may be less willing to lend to.

It has nothing to do with loans. Over the past few years, the French government has banned smoking in public places and virtually banned drinking as well. If you can't smoke nor drink, what's the point of going to such a place?

Being with other people?

What have they done about drinking? Italy banned smoking, but not drinking. Austria has yet to ban much of anything anywhere, and thus it's impossible for my wife and 6 month old daughter to go out for coffee and cake with friends in a pastry shop and not come home reeking of cigarette smoke, which is pretty gross (babies should not smell like smoke).

> What have they done about drinking?

You just can't drink and drive any more. I'm not saying it like it's a bad thing, but it explains why people don't go to bars after work as much as they did before.

Regarding smoking bans, I think owners should be free to decide if they want to accept or ban smoking inside their property. You'll have family-friendly places with no cigarette smoke, and adult-friendly places with no loud babies; everybody would be happy!

> You'll have family-friendly places with no cigarette smoke, and adult-friendly places with no loud babies; everybody would be happy!

Well, except you don't. Owners are free to decide here in Austria, and people smoke everywhere. We have located three places that are smoke-free here in Innsbruck: Ikea, McDonalds, and Burger King. People who are ordinarily very polite, always stopping at cross-walks and such, think nothing of lighting up in front of a pregnant woman or a baby.

I think this is one of the most interesting solutions I've seen to the smoking problem:

http://oxonomics.typepad.com/oxonomics/2008/02/the-economcs-...

Which would be more likely to create the outcome you cite than either a blanket ban, or no rules at all.

This is not about the economic crisis in any way. The magazine just put that in to get a bit of the feeling of this being something related to now.

This is about a culture of young people that is changing. I spent a lot of time in Paris during the summers, and the young french people are no longer really Cafe people. When you think Cafe, you think of sitting down to relax and socialize and talk, but nowadays, who does that anymore?

The cafes are run by unfirable waiters who are no fun. The french cafe business seems the same as it always has been, but times them are changing. The business needs to adapt to the changes, and it's not really doing so.

The Cafes in Berlin are WAY more comfortable to chill out at than the french Cafes, because they offer a bit more than just a wooden table and a cup of coffee.

And of course, the internet means that you don't need to meet people to catch-up anymore, you can just send them a message.

Cafes are not entertainment for young people anymore. They need to bring back the entertainment factor.

This is tragic, one of the delights of travelling in France was you could stop off in any small village, walk in to what looked like a café-bar and get the most amazing tasting simple food - an omlette that would make you go "wow".

I live in Paris and I love these cafés, there are everywhere, you never have to remember a place like you would do with a restaurant. It's only about sitting at a table with friends, drinking a very regular coffee...

About privatization, I was surprised that in Manhattan, there isn't any Café, only Starbucks coffees, on every corner. I guess Paris' cafés will change the same way.

Paris, and the Parisian life-style are very different from the rest of France. The article was more about cafés in small towns/villages. I don't think parisians are going to replace their cafés by Starbucks within the next 20 or 30 years.

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about France

This is a response to PG's comment about social, behavioral change. It is worth understanding the fundamental economic underpinning of this.

Two observations or assertions: a) People have more debt than a generation ago b) People have less leisure today than a generation ago.

These two assertions seem broadly true world-wide. As an example, young people can observe how many of their college-educated peers are graduating with excessive levels of debt. These two are connected - in fact, I believe (a) causes (b), to the extent that you can determine causation in social science.

Now who caused (a) i.e the culture of debt? Answer: Government policy, in particular central bank policy. Ultimately, money is credit in a fiat system, so when we talk about "Fed creating money out of thin air", they are really creating credit (i.e debt instruments) out of thin air. Eventually, cascading layers of debt entraps most of the population - corporations and individuals alike.

Debt causes serious cultural and social changes. Keynes had this right:

There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

Perhaps I'm missing something. How does the state of cafe's in France even remotely relate to Hacker News?

According to a program I heard years ago on public radio, if you sit outdoors at a French café in Madrid, Spain long enough, eventually everyone you've ever met will walk by.

Will this happen in roughly more, less, or the same amount of time it would take all the typewriter monkeys to produce the works of Shakespeare?

(just need to know how long after I arrive I should book my return flight)

I believe Usenet disproved the infinite monkeys theory.

No, the study was flawed. It turns out that there were very few actual monkeys on usenet. It was mostly just humans pretending to be monkeys. The delicate monkey sensitivities were too easily offended by all of the asshatery.

The guidelines say: "What to Submit: [...] "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

If you wanted to stretch the article to hacker/startup-related topics:

- The eroding economy means that more people are spending time at home, to the extent that communal watering holes are closing. Hence, there is a need for newer, cheaper ways for communities to interact.

- If the trend crosses the ocean, we may see closing coffeeshops, which serve as a gathering place for many hackers and entrepreneurial types.

(And it would seem PG is uniquely situated to define what does and doesn't relate to Hacker News... :) )

OK, so then you've pretty much satisfied my worry that there was some insanely obvious hackerish news in this post and verified that it is merely interesting on some obscure level.

Thanks.

I spend nearly everyday in a cafe doing part of my work. I really enjoy the time sucking down a coffee and people watching when I'm not hacking.

It has stayed busy here, I couldn't even find a table when I came in for lunch the other day. I don't know what this means about the local economy, but I would be sad if this place disappeared.

The 'bad' off topic articles are the ones that set off the endless, dreary, predictable debates about politics or economics. Stuff like this is easy to ignore if it doesn't happen to interest you, and isn't likely going to attract argumentative bozos, with little interest in hacking or involvement in startups, to the site.

What the hell do you think I'm doing all this work for?

If someday I find myself retired but without any French cafés to visit, it'll be like the end of a Twilight Zone episode.

This is an emergency! I need to go to France and bail out the croissant economy!

Not to worry mf.... The problem isn't that French Cafe's are dying. The problem is that the New York Times is dying. They just don't like to talk about that subject in first person singular. Replace "French Cafe" with NYT and you are starting to understand what the article is really about.

Well, I'm pretty sure the article is about the death of cafes in France. But in any case, the much-predicted death of the NYT isn't something I'm looking forward too, either.

Truly. I think we should ban the submitter, he clearly has no understanding of the way this site is supposed to work.

or we could ban you, just for advocating banning someone who submitted an article you were offended by

or we could ban you, for not getting the (admittedly not very funny) joke I was making :-)

What I found interesting about it is that it shows the increasing tendency toward social fragmentation is even affecting France. Robert Putnam noticed this change in 1995 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone). Networks will make the problem (or at least the trend) much worse. My wife and I have a couple friends staying with us at the moment, and it's striking how often all 4 of us are simultaneously sitting using laptops.

Historically this is quite a big change. The last social changes on this scale were probably the ones caused by cars. Though indeed this is partially caused by cars too.

That is an interesting perspective.

I've always thought of little cafes as France's startup industry. With the tourism and people expecting quaint little local eateries, it would seem that throwing a few tables out in a location where you had an oven and some floorspace would be a good way to bootstrap a little operation.

Perhaps your little eatery grows and you move into a larger space and attract more customers, and so on. Kind of an analogue to what many of us do with a few thousand lines of code on a little server slice somewhere.

I was curious (from my first comment) if anyone else would draw a solid link between French Cafes and startup hackery.

I don't wish to criticize you or your friends, but this is similar to the problem of having multiple TVs in a house. The only solution to this problem is to put the computers away and talk to each other.

In my house we have computers in an office, we have a TV in one room, but we have strict hours for the TV for the kids, we all eat meals together with no books, TV or computers allowed.

BTW I think it would be more healthy if the four of you sat in front of one TV and watched a program together (especially if you laughed at it, talked about it).

I don't think it is exactly like TV. You aren't talking to the TV. You are actually 'talking' when online, just not with your mouth.

My son often asks to 'do letters' on http://starfall.com

I was fixing a bug the other day, and when I said we couldn't do letters, he assertively said "close computer!"

Pretty insightful for a 21 month old.

If he's programming before he's potty-trained, it's all your fault. ;)

He has taken a remarkable interest in robots, so it's a pretty close race at this point.

This is not just a French issue (although I live in France and can confirm the very real loss of Cafe life). The BBC is today reporting ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7742539.stm ) on similar issues facing the rural pub in the UK. Once a foundation of any local community - all too often they are boarded up waiting conversion to housing.

There is fragmentation, but social capital also seems to change its manifestation. Communicating with your other friends via Facebook adds to social capital.

That's a shame, particularly if this effect becomes pronounced elsewhere.

There's been a lot written about the psychological/sociological role of places like cafes and bars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Place

What about the ban on smoking that happened two years ago? Couldn't that also be part of the problem?

Yes. That's mentioned in the article.

This shall be a much lonelier depression than the last one, and all thanks to our electronic distractions. It is sad.

Not necessarily. Social isolation is caused largely by the privatization of social objects. E.g., when everyone can afford their own barbecue they no longer need to go to the country club or town park to make dinner. If people have less money then theoretically there should be more demand for social objects to be socialized. In practice though even if a society shifts from being more gesellschaft to being more gemeinschaft, there are a few different forms this can take, not all of which would ameliorate the problem.

Good article on the subject:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/11/16/...

How many people here would have less social contacts if you took away their electronics?

Good God, the smoking nannies have got to France, too!

All cafés won't die. But no surprise if the redundant, dark, sad ones that serve bad coffee, do.

In Norway most cafés actually got more visitors after smoking was banned. Even the smokers themselves preferred the clean air.

This article about the poor French café's is just plain nonsense.

Yeah, French culture of complaining at the bar in the NYT !

Our culture is spreading in the USA !

No, thank you!

You can take your good food and functional health-care system elsewhere!

Yes, as we all know it's the best health-care system that will ever be devised in the whole universe for the centuries to come. The only (minor) problem is that's it's slightly expensive (can you spot France on this graph? http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotisations_sociales )

Actually, it's so good a system that a lot of young qualified workers like me left this paradise to work abroad, just to spread the word and tell other countries how wonderful it is!

You're right about the food, though.

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