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Comment by dgallagher | Hacker News Reader

I'd frequent the Kendall area when I lived in Boston 3.5 years ago. The thing that bugged me most about it was the lack of street-level places to sit down and work. There was one Starbucks and nothing else, besides semi-fast food restaurants which aren't good laptop environments.

Beautiful new high-rises were going up everywhere. There's a neat "secret" park on top of one of the buildings (Cambridge Center Roof Garden). Extremely easy to cycle around, and by far the best pedestrian-friendly traffic controls in the entire state.

However, unless you worked in one of the office buildings, or could enter MIT legally, there were few places for "outsiders" to wonder in, hang out, and hack. Is this still the case, or has it since become more welcoming to laptop nomads?

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Yeah, it's way better now. Voltage and Tatte are very friendly for hackers, and Starbucks, Cosi, or ABP aren't bad either. The entire ground floor of the MIT Stata Center is open to the public (literally 24/7) with ultra fast WiFi. If you need dedicated desks, Dogpatch or the Cambridge Innovation Center have you covered.

Unfortunately Google has invaded much of the roof garden with a recent renovation.

My favorite is Dwelltime on Broadway. Close enough to Central to get to quickly, yet away from much of the hustle+bustle and suits. They shut off the internet from 11-3p, which is great for a productive boost in the middle of the day. :)

I loved to work at the Atomic Bean & 1369 in Central & when by MIT I love the Rotch Library - that is one nicest spaces to hack.

One thing I liked about MIT (over Harvard, whose closed-ness I did not like) when I was visiting Cambridge is that large swathes of MIT are open to the public. The Stata center (the CS center) is open with free WiFi. Many MIT libraries are also open to the public (varies). The MIT food court is also open. Heck, I wandered around several dorms without being carded/checked, though that probably only worked because I look (and am) young and was wearing a hoodie + backpack (and most of the dorms require carding in, I believe).

It is becoming more welcoming. I like these two places on 3rd Street:

Voltage Cafe http://voltagecoffee.com

Tatte Bakery and Cafe http://www.tattecookies.com

I used to laugh at the real estate ads touting "vibrant" Kendall Square.

But those ads are actually coming true now.

> and by far the best pedestrian-friendly traffic controls in the entire state.

Yeah, among other things all of Cambridge uses [leading pedestrian interval](http://streetswiki.wikispaces.com/Leading+Pedestrian+Interva...), which is fantastic and something you really miss when you no longer have it.

In general, it's amazing to see the difference that slight "UI" improvements like this can make. For instance, the Cambridge crosswalk signals count down the time left to finish crossing. This may seem like a trivial nicety, but just across the river I feel like I'm rolling the dice every time I step into an intersection where I didn't specifically see the walk symbol come on. Will the light turn green while I'm in front of traffic? Or will I be doing a goofy half-run only to find out I had another minute or two to cross leisurely?

First world problems, I know.

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